Selecting more than one document in Dynamic Hyperlink?

Question

I am redoing the Dynamic Hyperlinks in a Geodatabase as suggested in Reconnecting hyperlink in Dynamic Hyperlink mxd in ArcMap?

Can you select more than one document when you select the Add New button?

It seems you can add one document at a time. I would like to select more than documents when the Add Hyperlink menu link to a Document.

I would think there would be way of adding more than document instead of closing and reopening the Add New button.

Answer 1

As explained in both, the help file and the FelixIP's comment in your previous post, this facility let's you to pick only one document. However, in the Using parameters to control how a program opens a hyperlinked document and Advanced hyperlink functionality sections of the help page, it is said that there are somewhat advanced functionalities whose usage is not as straightforward as selecting the to-be-hyperlinked document. Having said that, I can think of two options for your questions:

• Creating batch files (i.e., .BAT) for each feature, pointing to the files that you want to open in one-go, as explained here and giving hyperlinks to these BAT files;
• Listing all relevant documents separated by a delimiter in a field and looping through by using VB or Python function as given in the Advanced hyperlink functionality section of the help page. Say, your files are C:\filename1.mxd and C:\filename2.mxd for a polygon/row. If you create a text field large enough to contain these paths (including the delimiters) and concatenate with | as in C:\filename1.mxd|C:\filename2.mxd and finally use the Python script below in Hperlinks>Script section, theoretically you should be able to open these two documents with default program associated with MXD file.

import webbrowser
def OpenLink([Formatted_Lot_Plan]):
    for path in [Formatted_Lot_Plan].split("|"):
        webbrowser.open(path)
    return