Missing Values When Opening an Excel File Without Opening the Linked File

Question

I have Excel files that are linked to another file. (One file is a price book the other is a bid form that links to the price book file) Prior to updating to Office 2016 if I opened an existing bid file without opening the linked price book first, the bid would open with the pricing showing at the time of the last save. (I would choose to open the file WITHOUT updating the link).  This worked great to view bids that may have contained old pricing that I wanted to see. When I wanted to update the pricing, I would open the price book file first and then the bid file and everything would automatically update.  Everything was good!

Now with Excel 2013 when I open the bid file only, I see the pricing as the file opens, but as soon as I click on "Don't Update" the pricing disappears. This is a real problem and destroys a functionality we have come to depend on. Is this a change in Excel 2016 or is there something I am missing?

Answer 1

Hi Kfalls69 ,

This is a peer-to-peer user group where posts may, or may not, be monitored by MS personnel.

To transmit your comments to Microsoft, try:

                             http://excel.uservoice.com/

===

Regards,

Norman

Answer 2

I thought this forum was monitored by Microsoft and that it was a means to report issues. I would think that this is an issue that would warrant some attention.  I got one response that was pretty much a non-response - it appears he did not really read the issue (which would have been okay - IF he had responded to the reply, but nothing.

I have found out that if I open the file from File Explorer I get the behavior I described above. If I open it from within Excel, it works as it should.  I would think that someone from Microsoft would look into this and at least acknowledge the issue and respond in some fashion. OR, am I misunderstanding what this forum is about?

Answer 3

One additional thing about the above issue that I just realized. The "bid form" above does show the values that were the result of simple look-ups to the linked spreadsheet (i.e. customer name, address, etc.)  What seems to be not showing (they do show up until you make any selection in the "Update" or "Don't Update" dialog box) are cell values that are the result of a calculation on a value that would have been retrieved from the unopened linked file.  As I said before this is inconsistent with behave that we have depended on for years.

Answer 4

Thanks for the reply. Here are screen shots of the issue.  The first image shows what a file looks like as it opens prior to making a selection in the dialog box shown.  The second after the "Don't Update" option is selected.  As you can see all the linked cell values in the spreadsheet disappears. Prior to Office 2016 the cell values always remained. Which is critical - it allows us to see what the values were prior to changes in the linked price book. If we want to update to new pricing, we opened the price book first and the file made the link to the linked worksheet (the price book) and updated the pricing to reflect any changes.  As you can see in the last image, the Edit Links screen shows that the linked file is not open (as it should). 

I do not understand your last comment about creating a new excel file.  We have hundreds of existing files that are reviewed on a regular basis and this functionality has always worked and is critical to our business and others that I know of. 

Answer 5

Hello,

Welcome to Microsoft Community and thank you for posting your query.

Kindly check and verify what is the edit links status. To do so, kindly refer the following steps.

• Open the Excel file.
• Click on the Data tab in ribbon.
• Click on Edit Links and check if status is “Source is open” or any other status.

Also you may try creating new Excel file by linking the other file in same way and check if issue persist there.

Please reply us with the information asked for further assistance.

Thank you.