MS Word Document with Excel Links experiences problems updating

[Guest]

I have a user who has a Word document containing multiple links to multiple
Excel spreadsheets. There are roughly 6 different spreadsheets and as many
as 6 links to each spreadsheet. When opening the document, Word tries to
update the links and the following warning message is displayed "A document
with the name name.xls is already open. You cannot open two documents with
the same name, even if the documents are in different folders. To open the
second document, either close the document that's currently open, or rename
one of the documents.

MS Word will then crash. I have verified that the spreadsheet is not open.
The user updates these spreadsheets monthly, so the links do need to be
updated on a regular basis.

Does anyone have any insight with this one? Is there any additional
information I can provide?

Thanks...

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Brian -

I think the problem stems from having multiple links to the same file. Each
link has to 'open' that same file in order to update & once 'opened' by the
first link it doesn't get 'closed'. Hence the next link to the same file is
trying to open a file that is already open. Based on your description of the
file-linking complexity it's no surprise that Word crashes... It's
surprising that *Windows* doesn't crash

If the doc structure _must_ be this complex, you should be able to bypass
updating of the links by holding Shift while opening the file. (Or if there
is a prompt to update the links choose No rather than Yes.) Then try going
into Tools>Options>General (I think General is correct - am at home on my
Mac right now) & remove the check to Automatically Update Links at Open.
That should allow opening the file without crashing Word.

Secondly, don't attempt to update *all* links at once. Through the
Edit>Links dialog you can selectively update each link and you can
Control+Click multiple non-consecutive links/Shift+Click consecutively
listed links in order to update a few at a time - just don't select more
than one link to the same file at once. There should also be an option in
the same dialog to set the Links to Manual update rather than Automatic,
which I would also choose.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Guest]

Thanks. These were my thoughts also. Unfortunetly, my user claims that she
has been updating all of these links for the past year and has never had an
issue. I suggested setting them all to manual and updating them in that
fashion, but she insists that it worked previously.