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Word breaks Excel Links on save

Anonymous
2022-08-12T20:50:35+00:00

Hey All,

I have a word doc that has links to some tables in an Excel workbook. I pasted them into Word using the Paste Special, Paste Link, Picture (Windows Metafile) option. These tables all update just fine when the Word doc is open, but once I save and close it, the link is somehow changed. When I reopen the Word doc, the link no longer works. I've tried:

  1. Several different combinations of Paste, Paste Special to see if it just one that is misbehaving. They all do the same thing
  2. Restarting my laptop to see if its a memory issue. Nope, its not.
  3. Setting Word to automatically update links at opening versus not updating links at opening. Same issue with both of these.
  4. Reinstalling Office
  5. Repairing Office

The Word and Excel reside in the same folder on my hard drive. No networks or cloud participation involved here. Shft F9 shows this just after I've pasted the link and before I've saved and closed out the Word doc.

And this is how it looks after I've reopened the doc.

As you can see, the syntax has changed so that the sheet name and table reference is now incorporated into the file path and naturally, the link doesn't work. If I go into Links, this is an example of what the link now looks like.

I'm running MS 365 version 2207 Build 15427.20210 on a Lenovo X1 with 16GB RAM 64bit operating system with an i5-1031OU CPU.

Why is it doing this and can someone help me fix it as its driving me and my team bananas!!

UPDATE:

This appears to be a bug in the latest version of Word. This morning I spent a considerable amount of time saving the word doc as a Microsoft Word 97 - 2003 doc, relinked all the tables and it saves just fine with the links intact upon reopening the doc.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For business | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-08-17T12:08:56+00:00

    I'm having the same issue. Not sure why there hasn't been any replies on your post. I'm on another thread about the same thing where there is more activity. My only work around for now has been to to use an older .doc version of the word file. That keeps the links but it doesn't support newer features.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-08-18T08:22:50+00:00

    Dear Jones and Ben,

    Thanks for sharing the detailed information about the problem and appreciate for sharing the workaround to the problem. In this situation, I suggest you report the behavior to the related Word development team by adding the feedback in the Word application which is the best way to bring direct notice. Reference: How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office?

    Thanks for your cooperation.

    Sincerely,

    Mia | Microsoft Community Moderator

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