I have over 1000 Word documents with hyperlinks with relative paths to other documents. Most were created with Office 2007.


I recently updated my main machine to Office 2021 (a local license, not 365) and the links were all still working and the relative paths were visible if I opened a file and clicked on Edit Hyperlink. Well at least they were until yesterday.


Today, only the absolute paths are visible. However, if I copy one of the files to another machine which still has Office 2007 on it I can see that the relative paths are still there.


What has happened between yesterday and today? Has there been an automatic update that's broken the relative file display? Or could I have clicked on an option to display absolute rather than relative paths, even if the paths are actually relative?


Any ideas?