Thanks for that but how will this work in a cloud server? I thought absolute links were "hard links" in the way that it will not update properly unless there is a file there. That is, we want to use relative paths always.

To perhaps better explain what I mean is that if I have a cloud server at C:/User/Adam/Dropbox/Company Projects/105 Happy Road/Proposed GA.dwg then this link will stop working if John starts to work on it as on his computer he probably have the dropbox in another location so the same file on his computer may be D:/Storage/Dropbox/Company Projects/105 Happy Road/Proposed GA.dwg. However, if the relative link somehow is /Company Projects/105 Happy Road/Proposed GA.dwg then it should work for both of them, is that not so?

I am having the same issue.

EDIT: It seems like potentially the solution to the problem lies in overlay vs attachment but it is not clear to me how that should be solved.

EDIT 2: It seems to be related to relative paths but more importantly, here is a solution that worked in my case: The xref that does not work, unload it! Then attach the same file and find the one you want. That seems to replace the nested relative path with two separate links.