Indesign CS– links not updating for files on server

M

Morgan19

Registered
My company uses Indesign CS (3.0.1 on Mac OSX). We recently moved our job files over to a network drive, a Dell PowerEdge with Windows 2003 Standard Server, to help centralize operations. Problem is, I've noticed I couple oddities in Indesign when using the files on the server.

The most noteable and alarming hiccup is that linked images in an Indesign document no longer show "updated" icons when edited outside Indesign, nor can we re-insert an image to update the image manually.

As an example... Let's say I have a document with an image in it already up and running in Indesign. If I open up the image in Photoshop and save it, normally when going back to Indesign the Links panel would show that yellow ! icon to indicate that the file has been altered, so I would know to update the link and thus have the most recent image. Now that all our files are on the server, however, this doesn't happen: I get no indication that the graphic has been updated outside of Indesign. Even worse is that if I edit the graphic in Photoshop, save it, then go back into Indesign, click on the image, and try and insert the same image again (which before would always update it for me), nothing happens– despite having been updated and saved in Photoshop, the image will not change to the new version. I have to insert an entirely different image, then go *back* to the first one before it'll recognize the updated image.

Does anyone have any idea why Indesign (installed locally on each Mac) would be having this sort of trouble with files stored on a network drive? I know plenty of other agencies that operate off a central creative server, so surely this can be remedied somehow.

Thanks,
m19
 
Do you still have a connection to the old server? InDesign is tenacious when it keeps its links and if you don't completely disconnect that old drive it will keep its links to the files there.
 
Yes, in a manner of speaking-- the old "server" is each of the local Macs. ;) Prior to switching over to the network drive, each designer was working off their own computer.

m19
 
Well, you didn't say in your post where your files were located originally. ;)

You'll need to "hide" your local computer files so you can work on the server files and force InDesign to only see them on the server. Depending on how many files you're working with this could be a laborious process of re-linking.
 
Hmm... Okay, I could try that. But what about files that are brand new, created on the server? For example, I can make a new Indesign document that only exists on the server, and it'll have the same linking problems. Shouldn't it only affect files that have existed locally as well as now on the server? (Just trying to think it through.)

m19
 
I can only guess you're losing your linking/save file feature through InDesign because your files now reside on a pc server. PC files have one directory fork and mac files have two, so you're not only searching for a file, you're having to do a translation from one file system to another.

Just a guess though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top