I have a linked file that has about 6 source files that it is dependent on.
The links have been setup relatively. The user's open the source files and
the link files using a mapped drive letter that points to a remote server
\\servername\share i.e O:\ maps to \\servername\share

ie the Linked file is at o:\foldername1\linkedfile.xlsx

Some source files are located at o:\foldername1\foldername2\sourcefile1.xlsx
Other source files are located at o:\foldername3\sourcefile2.xlsx

Every so often, when one of the user's opens the file from the O drive, the
paths will look as follows:
c:\documents and settings\someusername\somepath\foldername2\sourcef ile1.xlsx

and some as just
c:\foldername3\sourcefile2.xlsx

All users SWEAR they have not saved the file on their C drive, that they
always open up on the O drive, make changes and save on the O drive. And I
believe them because I have watched them in action

Some of the mitigating circumstances that I think may play a role, but I am
not sure how is as follows

The NAS share is the following type of hardwa

a Sun NAS which does not use samba (which runs in
user space), rather it uses a smb/cifs protocol stack in the kernel.
it's a CIFS/SMB filesystem on a Sun StorageTek 5320C NAS running NAS
OS version 4.21

We implemented folder redirection and offline files using group policy and
the path to what is assigned as offline shares is the same root, but
different folders.. i.e
\\servername\differentfolder

I changed the mapped drives from using the \\servename reference to using a
cname reference
i.e \\cnameservername\share......

I made this change because we noticed that before, when the user's were
either offline, or in a connected state, but the system would not reconnect
to the server, that their mapped drive locations would not show the full
contents of the share. So I decided to use the cname to totally prevent the
offline mechanism fromaffecting the mapped drives, so that when the user was
truly offline, it would not appear as if they had access to the mapped drives.


So all of that to say, that the problem I am trying to figure out, is, why
would the Linked spreadsheet hard-code and remember these relative paths as
something off of the C drive of someone's computer

I hope that all made sense