Word 2003 OLE links

[ctreharne]

I'm trying to migrate elaborate Word and Excel templates from Office 2003 (yes, I'm a dinosaur) to Office 2013.



We can have as many as 125 internal links within Word (i.e., from Word text to Word text) and another 125 external links (i.e., from Excel to Word). The external links can be as simple as one number being imported to the narrative and as complex as 12 columns by 25 row Excel array in an exhibit.

Here's an example of a Word 2003 internal link:
{ LINK Word.Document.8 "\\\\server name\\drive name\\client folder\\project name130401.doc" OLE_LINK97 \r \* MERGEFORMAT }

Here's an example of a Word 2003 from Excel 2003 external link:
{ LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "\\\\server name\\drive name\\client folder\\project name130401.xls" BS!R102C1:R120C11 \f 4 \r \* MERGEFORMAT }

(as i more closely review the Excel to Word link, I notice that it doesn't say OLE_LINK like the internal Word link says; so maybe it's a technology other than OLE linking)

I've been told by more than one alleged expert that I should no longer rely on OLE llinking technology for security reasons (which I don't understand, partiuclarly since our OLE links never go out of house; our reports always go out in PDF format).

I tried using linking Excel 2013 arrays to Word 2013, but the imported Excel arrays don't retain their formatting (even though I've told them to). More specifically, the entry in the last row in the Excel array overflows to the next line (to be clear, it never did in Word 2003, or if it did, we could fix it) and reverts to its original font style and size.

I've seen linking similar to OLE links in a more current version (unknown) of Office, but my competitor wouldn't share the technology with me - go figure.

How can I update the embeeded Office 2003 OLE linking technology (both Word internal OLE links and external Excel-to-Word links) in to new Office 2013 templates without having to do a massive redesign of my Office 2003 templates?

[macropod]

All linking between Office files, in all versions of Office, relies on OLE linking. It is quite robust.

Your 'alleged' experts should demonstrate an alternative strategy for end users if they truly believe security is an issue. Sure, OLE links can be spoofed, but an outsider can't do it to your document. The only other risk of significance is that the linked file will be replaced, either deliberately or unintentionally, leading to data loss/corruption - but then you'll likely have lost the source file too... in which case you have other issues to deal with and, once those are resolved and the source file restored, the links too will be restored.

The presence of "OLE_LINK97" in one of your links is of no consequence; what that represents is nothing more than a bookmark name created by Word so that the target document can reference the correct range in the source document. You could just as easily use any other valid bookmark name. The Excel equivalent is "BS!R102C1:R120C11"; if you named the Excel range, you could use that name instead - named ranges in Excel are the equivalent of Word bookmarks in this context.

For updating the links, there's really only one issue to consider: are the filenames & paths the same. If so, there's nothing to update. If not, for a once-off exercise, you could use Alt-F9 to expose the links and use Find/Replace to update them, but Alt-F9 doesn't work for all links, or add the Edit Links button to Word's QAT and use that. the Alt-F9 & Find/Replace approach would handle most links and you could use the Edit Links button for the remainder.