Links do not update automatically.

[Jim Ransford]

I have an Access VBA function that posts data to an Excel spreadsheet. That
data is linked to Word documents. When the Word documents are printed, the
current data from the spreadsheet should be in the document.

This worked successfully for several years beginning with Office 97 through
Office 2003. At some point (maybe late last year) the links stopped being
updated automatically. All my settings are correct, the links are set to
update automatically.

In fact, a prompt now comes up to ask if the links should be updated when
the document is opended. Clicking OK does nothing. The links do not update.

I seem to remember reading someplace that this was a security issue and
either XP or Office has been updated to prevent automatic links from working.
(I did find something that acknowledged this issue and gave a registry hack
that at least prevented the now meaningless dialog prompt to update the
links. But it did not solve the bigger problem.)

How can I get this functionality back? We use this several times every day
and manually updating the links is very time consuming.

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?SmltIFJhbnNmb3Jk?=,

I have an Access VBA function that posts data to an Excel spreadsheet. That
data is linked to Word documents. When the Word documents are printed, the
current data from the spreadsheet should be in the document.

This worked successfully for several years beginning with Office 97 through
Office 2003. At some point (maybe late last year) the links stopped being
updated automatically. All my settings are correct, the links are set to
update automatically.

In fact, a prompt now comes up to ask if the links should be updated when
the document is opended. Clicking OK does nothing. The links do not update.

I seem to remember reading someplace that this was a security issue and
either XP or Office has been updated to prevent automatic links from working.
(I did find something that acknowledged this issue and gave a registry hack
that at least prevented the now meaningless dialog prompt to update the
links. But it did not solve the bigger problem.)

How can I get this functionality back? We use this several times every day
and manually updating the links is very time consuming.

I seem to recall (referring to that security update you mention) that once a
document has stopped updating the links automatically, it will not do so again.
But how about Ctrl+A, F9?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[Jim Ransford]

Cindy M -

Well, your comments I think solved my problem. I went through the trouble
to create a new installation of XP and Office 2003 (VMWare works great!) to
try to diagnose the problem.

Your comment "that once a document has stopped updating the links
automatically, it will not do so again" was the key.

If I create a new Word doc and link its fields to my Excel spreadsheet,
changes in Excel automatically update to my Word doc. But if I use my old
Word doc the updates don't happen.

We'll never know what caused my old docs to stop updating, but if I recreate
them and all this works properly, then it will be worth the effort.

Thanks much!

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi Jim,

VMWare works great!

Doesn't it just, though I can't imagine how I ever managed without it, and
think fondly of the person who recommended it to me every time I use it.

Your comment "that once a document has stopped updating the links
automatically, it will not do so again" was the key.

If I create a new Word doc and link its fields to my Excel spreadsheet,
changes in Excel automatically update to my Word doc. But if I use my old
Word doc the updates don't happen.

We'll never know what caused my old docs to stop updating, but if I recreate
them and all this works properly, then it will be worth the effort.

Glad you've found a satisfactory way around the problem. Thanks for reporting
back!

Cindy Meister