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You can use either an absolute address or a relative address when you create hyperlinks in Word. An absolute address is the full address or path of the target website or file, such as https://www.mycompany.com/departments/rresearch/articles/2017/578045.docx.
The relative address of the target file or site is relative to the location of the current document and is generally much shorter than the full address. For example, if your document's address is https://www.mycompany.com/departments/research/articles/newwidgets.docx, the default base address used for hyperlinks is https://www.mycompany.com/departments/research/articles/. If you were to create a hyperlink to another document in the /articles folder, you need only enter the document name in the hyperlink's Address box. However, if you were to create a link to an article with the address https://www.mycompany.com/departments/development/articles/widgetparts.docx, you would put development/articles/widgetparts.docx in the hyperlink's Address box. (You could also use the target article's full address.)
If you want to use a different base address for the hyperlinks in a document, you can enter this address in the Hyperlink base field for the document. Using the example in the previous paragraph, suppose your newwidgets.docx document has several hyperlinks to articles in https://www.othercompany.com/support. Although you could enter the full address for each of these hyperlinks, a better solution would be to set your hyperlink base as https://www.othercompany.com/support/ When you create a hyperlink to an article at this location, you would need to enter only the article name for the hyperlink address instead of the full address.
Use these steps to set a new hyperlink base address for a document.
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On the File menu, click Info.
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On the right side of the pane, in the Hyperlink base box, type the address or path that you want to use.
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On the File menu, click Info.
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On the right side of the pane, click the Properties arrow, and then select Advanced Properties.
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Click the Summary tab.
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In the Hyperlink base box, type the address or path that you want to use.
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Click the Microsoft Office Button
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Click the Property Views and Options arrow, click Advanced Properties, and then click the Summary tab.
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In the Hyperlink base box, type the address or path that you want to use.
