Hyperlinking Between BSD SpecLink^® and MS Word

You already know that you can create a project note for any paragraph in SpecLink, a feature that is especially useful in office master projects. But what if you want to attach a multi-page document or one that has embedded illustrations? Did you know that SpecLink lets you create hyperlinks to separate Word documents?

To create these hyperlinks, the first thing you need to do is to establish the root directory path for all Word documents that will be hyperlinked to SpecLink. Typically, this path would be a folder on the network drive where SpecLink is installed. If several people will be using your master project file, the root directory path must be one that all users can follow; otherwise they will not be able to open the linked documents. To establish the root directory path for Word documents that will be linked to your office master project, follow these steps:

• Using Windows Explorer, create the folder where all hyperlinked documents will be stored. For simplicity, we suggest you establish a subfolder under your SpecLink folder.
• In SpecLink, close all projects, then from the File menu, click on Permissions. When the dialog box opens, click on the System Settings tab.
• The last setting on the System Settings tab is Root Directory Path for Linked Documents. Click on the browse icon for that setting and find the folder you created in Step 1. Click OK, and the root directory path should appear in the setting.
• Click on Apply and OK.
• Using Windows Explorer or Word, place each document that will be linked to the master project file in the folder you created under Step 1 before you create a hyperlink to that document.

After you have established the Root Directory, use the following steps to create a hyperlink that will automatically open a Word document from SpecLink:

• Be sure the Word document you want to link to has been placed in your linked documents folder.
• In your project, open to the appropriate section and scroll to the paragraph where you want the hyperlink.
• If the Document Link (DL) status column is not visible, on the View menu, click on Display Layout and then on Document Links. The DL column opens.
• Open Windows Explorer and find the document to which you want a link. Click on the document and hold the left mouse button down, then drag the icon from Explorer and drop it in the DL column at your source paragraph. The link is created and a Word icon appears.

If you point to an icon without clicking, a balloon will appear with the file name of the linked document. Subsequently, all you have to do to activate the hyperlink is to click once on the Word icon in the DL column. If Word is closed, clicking once on the icon opens Word and then opens the hyperlinked document. There are a couple of additional things you need to know about this feature: 1) each user who will need access to the linked documents must establish the root directory path in the Permissions dialog box; 2) to remove a hyperlink, locate the paragraph that has the hyperlink you want to remove and click anywhere within the paragraph. From the Document menu, choose Remove Document Hyperlink.

Embedding context-sensitive hyperlinks to Word documents can make your office master project a much more powerful tool, extending your corporate memory to all SpecLink users in your firm. If you were unfamiliar with this built-in hyperlinking capability, we suggest you try it out to see how easy it is to implement.