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AmandaAaron's avatar
AmandaAaron
Copper Contributor
Jul 26, 2022

OLE Links incompatible with DOCX format?? Help...

My company creates documents which link hundreds of excel spreadsheet cells and tables to Word through OLE links (Paste Special, paste as link, paste as worksheet object or unformatted text).   The...
Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP's avatar
Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP
MVP
Jul 26, 2022
Try working around the issue by using CTRL+a to select everything in the document and then use CTRL+F11 to lock the fields and saving the document before closing it. You can use CTRL+SHIFT+F11 to unlock the fields when required.
  • AmandaAaron's avatar
    AmandaAaron
    Copper Contributor
    Jul 27, 2022

    Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP I like this workaround suggestion quite a bit but after locking all the fields in the document and reopening the document in Word, it still looks for each field in Excel when opening the document and takes quite a bit of time to open the file as it tries to find the source of each OLE link. This did allow me to open the document (whereas before it would get corrupted and totally crash) but it is a very slow open - several minutes. I'm open to any other ideas/suggestions you have thank you!!

    • Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP's avatar
      Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP
      MVP
      Jul 27, 2022

      AmandaAaron Does the data come for a single Excel workbook, or from multiple workbooks?

       

      If it is just from one workbook, if you upload a copy of the Word document with the fields locked, and a copy of the workbook, I will investigate the issue.

      • AmandaAaron's avatar
        AmandaAaron
        Copper Contributor
        Jul 28, 2022

        Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP It's very kind of you to offer to take a look at the documents. Yes, all the links are from a single Excel workbook.

         

        I will provide the excel workbook and the Word file saved in both DOC and DOCX formats so you can see the difference in file opening time for the two formats. I believe you'll need to redirect the path of all the OLE links to the local location on your machine first, however, since the path of the links in my Word template points to my desktop - my links have absolute paths, not relative ones. 

         

        Once the links point to the right place on your computer, I believe you'll see that the DOCX file takes several minutes to open and it appears to be looking for all the links as it opens (even if you didn't have Excel running, it will be opening in the background and you can see Excel running as a task on your machine) while the DOC file opens right away without opening Excel in the background. This seems to happen even with the links locked. In my experience, the DOCX file will open and function for a while but eventually it will crash and become corrupted and the repair will involve breaking a bunch of the OLE links to workbook objects.

         

        I don't see a way to upload these documents here, but here are links to download them:

         

        https://www.dropbox.com/s/mepewaml4qo8zam/Aaron%20Valuation%20mixed-use%20excel%20template%20JM.xlsx?dl=0

        https://www.dropbox.com/s/65tie7603rjday5/Aaron%20Valuation%20mixed-use%20Word%20template%20OLE%20links%20LOCKED.docx?dl=0 with OLE fields locked

        https://www.dropbox.com/s/tgcqselylvsq5yx/Aaron%20Valuation%20mixed-use%20Word%20template%20OLE%20links%20LOCKED.doc?dl=0 with OLE fields locked

         

        Thank you!

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