There are some settings you can check on. The problems I had were in trying
to maintain relative links in Web pages; inability to do this forced me to
upgrade to FrontPage for Web authoring, which of course was the right
decision. But have a look at these variables:

1. Hyperlink base in File | Properties. There seem to be varying opinions
about whether having one or not having one helps.

2. Tools | Options | General: Update automatic links at Open.

3. Tools | Options | General: Web Options... | Files: Update links on save.
(My problem was with "updating" links on open rather than save, however.)

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"MattM" wrote in message
...
Suzanne, Fred, Many thanks for getting back to me on this one.

Fred: I think you are saying that, for you, Word *doesn't* convert
absolute
hyperlinks to relative if you use a full absolute path, in the form
\\servername\volume\folder1\folder2\...\docname.do c, in the hyperlink
destination box.

That is *not* my experience - Word automatically converts even this into a
relative path.

I don't know why it does this: it's not at all helpful, and presumably it
would have been less work for the Word programmers not have implemented
this
feature.

Unfortunately I don't have access to the exact version of Word/Windows I
use
in my workplace right now, but I believe it's Word 2002 running on Windows
XP. I'll do yet more experimentation with this in the office tomorrow and
try
and post some specific details of the behaviour of my version of Word in
various situations, in the hope this will shed a little more light here.

Thanks again, M