what you can do to avoid that is just create the advanced pdf template once, and do the linking to the file in the file cabinet that has the actual template code. You'll never have to even open the advanced pdf window anymore. Just upload code to file cabinet and refresh the actual pdf and itll pull in that new code.

That's what I am currently doing via <#include>. However, when we refreshed our sandbox it pointed back to the production file, and no matter how many times we refresh or clear our cache, we can't save the pdf. I need to figure out if there is a way to reference a file with a relative path. Until then, I need to be able to update advanced PDF to point to the dev file.