OLE links breaking between Word and Excel

T

Travis

We are using Prosystem FX Engagement and we frequently have links between
Word and Excel that are just basic OLE links (Office 2003). A table will be
copied from Excel and pasted into Word using Edit - Paste Link. Now
Engagement’s folder structure is setup as follows:

C:\Pfx Engagement\wm\workpapers\{User Profile GUID}\{Binder GUID}\{Workpaper
Files}

A path from my personal machine is:

C:\Pfx
Engagement\WM\Workpapers\{9ADF29EC-869B-4A60-A754-E952C09CA4CB}\{6A8ED35B-D8E9-410B-9B6D-0FC58E9199E4}\ {00A14CA8-294F-4CE5-958A-52EDCD638C10}.doc


A key piece of this is the User Profile GUID. Every user has a unique GUID
so the same document in the same binder (folder) on another person’s machine
will have a different path because the Profile GUID is different.

Now when a set of linked files are working normally they seem to just look
to find the linked file within the same folder that the file resides in and
ignores the full path.

In a situation where the link is broken it appears to change the type of
link to use the full path. So on one person’s machine the linking works fine
but on everyone else’s machines they do not because the path to the same file
is actually different.


The steps that lead to the error are:

1) A user creates links from an Excel file into a Word file. At this
point the links will work for everyone.

2) A change to the file is requested and someone edits the excel file.
Word file looks normal for this user

3) Another user obtains copies of the files and the Word doc will show
"Error! Not a valid link." for each of the affected links

If you go into Edit – Links you can see that the link type is different. I
can’t recall what each type says.



This is a sporadic issue throughout multiple offices. Some offices like
mine office have had to deal with it for years while others have never seen
it at all.

We have a word processor in the office that has been with us for years that
does the same steps and she has gone months where everything is fine and then
it will pop back up again.

One of our word processors talked with her counterpart in an office that
hasn’t had the problem and compared their process steps to try and find a
cause with no avail.

I have tried to replicate the break with no luck as well.

If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate the help.

Thanks,
 

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