Excel 2000 converts UNC links to relative - need to preserve UNC links!

I am using Excel 2000 (I think it happens on Excel XP too). I have
hundreds of links in a spreadsheet (to Word files, text files, and
other Excel spreadsheets). When I enter my links, I always enter them
in the form

\\servername\sharename\directory

I store this link on one fileserver, and it contains links to files on
that same fileserver and a second fileserver. Excel appears to store
all my links in UNC format when I first enter them. But when I save
and close, then re-open the spreadsheet, all the links pointing to
files on the same fileserver that the spreadsheet is on have been
converted to relative links. This is a huge problem because I email
this spreadsheet to others and they store the spreadsheet on their own
machines. Of course, the links that were converted to relative paths
don't work (but the links that remained in UNC format, the links to
files on the second fileserver that I talked about above) are OK.

1) Create a spreadsheet on fileserver1, saved at
\\fileserver1\dir1\excel.xls
2) Create an absolute link to a document saved at
\\fileserver1\dir2\word1.doc
3) Create an absolute link to a document saved at
\\fileserver2\dir3\word2.doc
4) Now check both the links just to prove that they were saved as UNC
links
5) Save and exit the spreadsheet
6) Open the same spreadsheet again
7) Check the first link to the file on fileserver1. It will now be of
the form "..\dir2\word1.doc" instead of "\\fileserver1\dir2\word1.doc"
8) Check the second link to the file on fileserver2. It's still fine
(in UNC format)

Now when these spreadsheets with these links get moved around,
everything blows up. Continuing with my above example:

9) Copy this spreadsheet to another fileserver or your desktop.
10) Open the spreadsheet at the new location
11) Test the first link. It is now broken and says something like,
"The address of this site is not valid. Check the address and try
again". Yes, it's broken, because this link became relative!
12) Test the second link. It's still fine, since it remains as an
absolute (UNC) path.

I really badly need to figure out how to get Excel to honor my UNC
entered links and not change them to relative. Or, I need some other
advice as to how to avoid this problem.

Thanks very much,
Jeff

P.S. When I open this same spreadsheet in Excel XP, when I drag my
cursor over the link, it shows links to the files on the same
fileserver in the form "file:///\\fileserver1\dir2\filename.doc".
However, when I edit the Hyperlink, it shows up in the "Address" field
as relative. It would seem that Excel has not forgotten my UNC path.
But I've tried many different iterations of opening the Excel 2000
file in Excel XP and saving it to a 3rd fileserver (and also picking
various "Save as..." types) in an effort to convince Excel to preserve
my UNC links on fileserver3, but no luck.