Linked objects

[David Pruitt]

In our office we do reporting using linked excel objects in powerpoint. Under
powerpoint 2003, this process rarely failed us. We recently converted to
Office 2007, including powerpoint 2007, and the process is no longer
reliable. We have debugged our process, installed SP1, and searched the
knowledge base (http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=927284). We
can succesfully create and update links within a continuous Windows session,
however, it appears that when the user or session changes, attempts to update
linked objects will invariably result in the message "the linked file is
unavailable and can't be updated".

Our excel files and powerpoint files are located on a network drive. The
directory structure can get deep. However, our process always worked under
Office 2003, so we don't think it is a path length problem. Is any one aware
of a solution? A work around? A reason for the error?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

In our office we do reporting using linked excel objects in powerpoint. Under
powerpoint 2003, this process rarely failed us. We recently converted to
Office 2007, including powerpoint 2007, and the process is no longer
reliable. We have debugged our process, installed SP1, and searched the
knowledge base (http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=927284). We
can succesfully create and update links within a continuous Windows session,
however, it appears that when the user or session changes, attempts to update
linked objects will invariably result in the message "the linked file is
unavailable and can't be updated".

Our excel files and powerpoint files are located on a network drive. The
directory structure can get deep. However, our process always worked under
Office 2003, so we don't think it is a path length problem. Is any one aware
of a solution? A work around? A reason for the error?

Sorry it's taken so long to respond. You may've noticed that this same problem
has come up several times here, and it *is* a known (to MS) bug.

There's no good workaround available from MS, but here's hoping that SP2 fixes
it.

Linking to a local rather than network drive seems to solve the problem, and
since the link information maintained by PPT internally actually *is* correct,
it's possible to locate the linked Excel files and move them to local drives
then repoint the links there.

We have an add-in that will do this automatically. You can read a bit more
about it at http://www.pptools.com/fixlinks/

The free demo won't, unfortunately, allow you to test this particular feature.
If you're interested, get in touch with me at steve at-sign pptools dot com and
we'll try to work out a way for you to test it further.