Can we detect if a Word document contains links to Excel spreadshe

[Guest]

We have all of our reports in the server. These are Word documents. Many
contain links to Excel spreadsheets when presenting tables, a feature we
really like. We can open the report in Word, right-click to a table and
choose Update Link when we know we have modified the table. We can also open
an Excel worksheet by double-cliking the table in Word (assuming the naming
convention for all files has not changed).

P R O B L E M:

Suppose many years from now, a new employee needs to update a report in Word
document that contains hundreds of pages and many many many tables (some
linked, some don't), how can the new employee be sure of what tables are
actually linked to what Excel worsheets???

Is there any way to open the Word document and say... "tell Word to
highlight or mark only those tables that contain links???"

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm assuming that these linked tables are in the form of a LINK field.
Alt+F9 will display the field code. With field codes displayed, you can use
Edit | Find to search for ^19 LINK, which will find all such fields.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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[Jay Freedman]

In the Word document, press Alt+F9 to display field codes instead of field
results. Then use the Edit > Find command to search for

^d LINK Excel

If you just want to update them all, check the box in the Find dialog for
"Highlight all items found in" and select Main Document in the dropdown.
Click the Find All button. If any are found, press F9 to update them all.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Thank you Suzanne and Jay for your reply; I tried your suggestions, but they
didn't work. Could you please explain what it means a "LINK field"? The way
we insert Excel links into Word is this one:

1) in Excel we highlight the table we want to link
2) right-click > Copy
3) in Word we place the cursor at the position where we want the table to be
inserted/linked
4) right-click > Paste

By the way, we are using Office 2007.

 

[Guest]

I made a mistake and I want to correct the step number 4 that I listed before:

1) in Excel we highlight the table we want to link
2) right-click > Copy
3) in Word we place the cursor at the position where we want the table to be
inserted/linked
4) in the Home tab > click the arrow just below the Paste icon > select
Paste Special... > Paste link As: > Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet Object

 

[Jay Freedman]

OK, I think we're close to the right place.

There's one thing you didn't mention in step 4. When you Paste
Special, you must be clicking the Paste Link option button in that
dialog. If you didn't, and left the Paste option button selected, then
there won't be any Update Link item on the right-click menu. That's
because the plain Paste option disconnects the copy in the Word
document from the original Excel worksheet. The Paste Link option
keeps them connected so you can update Word when the Excel copy
changes.

So, having determined that you must have done a Paste Link, I'll
repeat my earlier instruction to press the Alt+F9 combination in the
Word document. That causes all the fields in the document to display
their "field codes". Each table that you pasted from Excel will look
something like this:

{LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\some folders\\source.xlsx"
"Sheet1!R2C1:R12C4" \a \p}

Any that you pasted without the Paste Link will look like this:

{EMBED Excel.Sheet.12}

Pressing Alt+F9 again will switch back to the tables (the results of
the fields).

In order to search for these fields with the Find dialog, you have to
display the field codes first because the search expression looks for
the LINK keyword in the field code, and it won't be found if the field
codes aren't displayed.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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