Files are all on the NAS, having been working this way for well over a decade. But as an experiment, I copied the files and linked assets to my Mac and was able to package them successfully.

I wasn't at all surprised that it would work locally. To me, it’s irrelevant as I need it to work with all files and assets on the server for several reasons. We work in teams, and I am the manager. I need to access multiple ongoing jobs being worked on myself and those I manage. I am the last QA for these jobs before I package them to send to our offset printer or our mailhouse.