Field-based hyperlinks in an ArcMap map package (.mpk)?

Question

I have a point shapefile where each point has multiple hyperlink fields in its attribute table as per How to add multiple relative hyperlinks to single point in ArcGIS for Desktop with Basic level license? These hyperlinks are to photos stored locally.

Ideally I want to bundle up the map (shapefiles and all) and the photos and export them as a map package (*.mpk) so that the receiver can open it up and click on the hyperlinks in the shapefiles.

Is there any way of doing this? I know the map package export function has the option to include additional files but I am not sure how to get this to work for me. Attachments are not an option, as my licence is Basic, and geodatabases or dynamic hyperlinks are not options as I need each point feature to link to multiple photos.

Answer 1

The solution was to include the photos as additional files when creating the map package, and setting the hyperlinks to the anticipated relative path (here it was ..\commondata\userdata, as discussed in the ArcMap help on laying out relative hyperlinks) in the extracted *.mpk folder.

Answer 2

I'm going to provide a slight variation to @Willis answer. They suggested a solution which requires storing your photos in the anticipated folder location of a map package.

Whilst this appears to be the only solution I don't like it as ..\commondata\userdata is not a folder structure used by my organization. I wonder if anyone actually uses these folder names?

So I have a point featureclass with links to photos:

For the layer property I set it to the name field as shown below:

Normally I would have the hyper link field as Path. But just before I attempt to create the map package I go into the document properties and set the hyperlink base (this would normally be blank) to the map package location as shown below:

Open the map package and the hyper-links function as expected.