Excel needs to be granted access for hyperlinked jpegs

Hello,

I am working on a DB in Excel that holds information and pictures and purchase information on a collection of antiques. I have the Excel file accessing a "Photos" folder and an "Invoice folder". When using the Excel file you can click a hyperlink in a cell and open a large picture of the antique. Same with the invoice. This all works very well until I try to transfer the whole folder (which contains the Excel file, Photos Folder, Invoice Folder) to another Mac or put the whole folder somewhere else on MY mac. Then when I click the hyperlinks I get:

I click "select" and then get the file that is hyperlinked highlighted and ready to be granted access. On clicking the file selected it opens as usual. But this is just crazy! I have researched this hugely and have tried several things like granting Full Disk access to Excel in system settings/privacy and security -- but that has NOT changed this situation. I have tried setting a "Hyperlink Base" in the Excel preferences/properties -- but that has no effect. In the end this isn't a pathname issue -- it's an access issue. I have read that Mac uses "sandboxes" to allow an app access to only certain areas of a mac -- which is great for security. But there needs to be some way to allow a developer to bypass this limitation so that simple projects will work. I don't have this issue on my Windows machine and I used Mac back in the 90's and did all kinds of projects like this -- no problem -- opening JPEG's with hyperlinks (from Hypercard actually -- laugh all you want -- at least it worked!). Ultimately this will require the end user to "Grant Access" to every hyperlinked file. Luckily once granted I don't get the dialog again. But if I happen to move the project folder somewhere else it requires this granting again -- which is really very annoying and weird. I would like to be able to set up this DB on my clients computer and not have to go through granting access for all the hyperlinked files. And again... this is not a pathname issue -- as you can see the file is there, excel knows where it is, it's the Mac that won't let Excel open the file without "granting access".

Thank you for any help!

-- Jen (Kickboxkitty)