Excel 2007 - Change link source requiring multiple entry of passwo

[Glen Miller]

I have an issue with repointing links in Excel 2007:

When I change the link source to repoint to a different file, Excel is
asking for the source file pasword to be entered for each cell in the file I
am linking from.

This is causing major time issues in our month-end reporting:

I have a management accounts file which is linked to a large number of other
pasword protected Excel files, which are updated by numerous individuals. The
files are saved in a secure directory on our company server, each month the
files are copied into a sub-directory for the current month and renamed with
that month as part of the filename
..
It used to be a painless operation; up to Excel 2003, to change the source
of the links in the management accounts file to point to the current month
source files.
Now when I do this in Excel 2007, it is asking me to enter the password 24
times for each linked file.

This only happens when linking between 2007 files, there's no problem in
linking between 2007 and 2003 files.

Is there a way around this, so that I only need to enter the password once
for each file (the way it was before updating to 2007)?

Thanks!
Glen