Automatic links in Excel 2003

[Guest]

We are on XP with Office 2003, In Excel 2003 on a file created in Excel 2000
when user attempted to open the attached excel file in Excel 2003, she got
prompt "the workbook contains automatic links to information in another
workbook, do you want to update this workbook with changes made to the other
workbook". No matter she chose "update" or "don't update", the data in
"actual" column will disapper.

Support agent helped her try to disable auto-update.
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;288851). But we
still get prompt and still the same problem.

Suggestions????? Thanks, Jamie

 

[Dave Peterson]

xl2002+ likes to recalculate any workbooks that were created in previous
versions. In earlier versions of excel, if you answer No to the update links
prompt, the existing values are kept. In xl2002+, you get those errors.

Jim Rech posted a registry tweak:
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

Maybe it'll work ok for you.

 

[Guest]

When I select "Don't Update" at the prompt still every time I open the
spreadsheet I get the "Update"/"Don't Update" prompt. So I did the registry
tweak and still get the prompt.

 

[Dave Peterson]

The registry tweak wasn't to get rid of the prompt. It was to keep the values
from turning to #Name? errors.

There's an option that you can use to tell excel to always update, but don't
ask.
Tools|Options|edit tab
uncheck "ask to update automatic links"

The links will be updated, but no prompt.

=====
There's a workbook level setting (added in xl2002) that you can use:
Edit|links|startup prompt

You can specify how the links should be handled at start up.

===
If the user specifies that they want to decide (via tools|options|edit), then
excel uses that setting.

 

[Guest]

Got it all straightened out, thank you so much for your help Dave, excellent!
Jim