Linked Assets

It is also important to note that if you don't have a 'subscription' the import filter in the Source Docker is limited. I've learned this a painful way. At home, on my subscription based version, I can link vectors of all kinds, CDR, AI, SVG etc. On the non-subscribed version, I am limited to only raster formats. This is a severe handicap for me at work.

Thanks for the feedback Klaus - my comment was more to do with the nature of the external link and how it relates to filesize. The link exists which is great for updating outside of coreldraw but as far as I can tell some of the image data gets saved into the coreldraw file too. It varies from image to image, for example sometimes I can save a 50MB image file and the corel filesize is only 5MB, however other times I can import 2 x 5MB jpegs and the coreldraw filesize saves as around 20MB. In each instance I can see the links in the sources panel and they appear to be importing correctly.

CorelDRAW does provide the option to "Import as externally linked image" when using the Import function (dialogue).
Alternatively, you can use the "Sources" docker to "Add linked file". In the Sources docker you will also find a list of externally linked images/files to control/manage these linked assets.

Wholeheartedly agree with this one. The fact that corel always embeds the image data even when linking and does not save with compression means multi page documents blow out in filesize very easily. When saving multiple iterations of these documents, many gigabytes of data creates file storage and backup issues that are are only getting worse as the standard of images increases with technology. Would be fantastic to use a linking system similar to Illustrator where the image data is not part of the main file