If you're sending a file with links to an Excel workbook to your customers, the links won't work for them anyway, since they won't have the workbook and, even if they did, they'd have to change all the links to point to wherever they save the workbook. If you don't send the workbook and the links are set to automatic update, they may produce errors in the document when it is opened on the recipient's PC.

Accordingly, you may as well break all the links before sending the document. The simplest way of doing that is to press Ctrl-A, F9. However, that will break all other links in the document too (e.g. hyperlinks, cross-references, Table of Contents). The simplest alternative is to File>Edit Links to files and use the 'Break Link' option for each link (you can also add the 'Edit Links' button to Word's QAT).

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]