In Word COM, setting the HeaderFooter.LinkToPrevious property does not always work

Question

In our COM Word add-in, sometimes setting the HeaderFooter.LinkToPrevious property to False does not work.

Setting LinkToPrevious from True to False can result in these unwanted scenarios

• LinkToPrevious remains set to True
• LinkToPrevious returns the value False but renders in Word as True
• it works but the same header/footer type in the prior section can have its LinkToPrevious value set from False to True

This behaviour is increasingly being seen since around September 2025. It is seen as part of a large document assembly process where numerous source documents are brought into a single document. Producing a small reproducible of the problem has to date proved elusive.

Introduction of retries, waits, header/footer selection, main body selection to end, very careful COM object release management, very limited COM object life time, executing the repaginate command, only targeting existing header/footer types or not, and other attempts has not had any curative effect.

It feels like Word's internal structure for managing the headers/footers link states is corrupted or perhaps being too slowly updated in the background but without a means to wait for it, besides a blunt and sometimes quite long wait, managing the process is not being achieved.

The issue is being experienced across more than 3 dozen client sites over many machines. It is being experienced in Word versions from 2016 through to M365.

Thankyou

Answer 1

Hi Tim Farrelly

To better understand your situation, it may be useful to provide:

• A minimal reproducible sample that demonstrates the behavior, if one can be created.
• The exact Word build numbers where the issue is observed.
• Whether the behavior occurs with a new blank document and a simplified automation sequence.
• Whether the resulting document shows any repair prompts when reopened.

If the issue is significantly affecting production environments, I would recommend opening a support case with Microsoft. The support team may be able to collect diagnostic information; review affected documents and determine whether this behavior matches any known product issues or requires further investigation by the product team.

For Microsoft 365 business subscriptions, an administrator can create a support request from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center > Help & support.

For further instructions, you can follow this guide: Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn

I hope this information is helpful.

---

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.