Re: updating or changing sources in links

[Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>]

Holly Steele wrote:
> Has anyone found a way to deal with this interesting Word quirk.
> 
> I have this hellish master document I am dealing with (I know I know..no
> need to say it. It is one of the constraints of my project)
> 
> Anyways, I had to relink the pictures because the links have be lost.
> 
> My approach is to do Edit>Links...Update or change source (update doesn't
> always work)

What version of Word are you using?

FWIW, you might try checking for patches from Microsoft, and if that 
doesn't fix it then try turning off change tracking, versioning, and 
automatically updating fields (which can get cumbersome if you're 
tracking changes). When OLE Linking gets squirrelly, that's the first 
thing I do, sometimes it buys a little time.

> 
> The weird thing is that pictures will update or respond to changing the
> source if the pictures are formatted as in-line with text. If they are
> formatted square, the system won't recognize the picture. Change it back to
> in-line with text and it works just fine.

I just tried this in Word 2007 on Vista Business, but I couldn't get it 
to work either.

I followed the online Help steps for Linking--I know them well because 
they're the same steps OLE linking and embedding have always used--but I 
couldn't get it to link at all, only embed. I recorded the steps as a 
macro, and the macro shows that Word thinks it is doing a link, but I 
didn't get one in the document, just an embedded field code that toggles 
to a "text icon" (distorted text indicating a picture occupies that 
place). Double-click the icon thing and the picture opens in a picture 
viewer app, not in the document. What a Low down dirty trick.

In my estimation, you could get the same level of "convenience" or 
"ease" in maintaining your hellish documents by using Insert > Picture, 
instead of the Insert > Object > From File > Link > Don't Show as Icon 
thing you have to do to get a linked picture. I think this is true for 
any version of Word.

If you Insert > Picture, the pic is there in the doc. With a master doc 
you might be wary of making files bigger, but you might not mind so much 
if the sub-documents aren't very big to begin with. Compared to using 
OLE links, I would tend to Insert>Picture in all cases, because it is 
less problematic, more stable, overall.

If you do Insert > Picture, it gives you the option to "Change Picture" 
when you right click on the inserted picture. Change Picture goes takes 
you straight into a file browser. One click, one browse, and the picture 
is updated.

So, maintaining the document's pictures will be pretty much the same as 
remaking a link, possibly easier.

BTW, I tried linking and inserting a picture with text inline and 
square, but the linking problem didn't go away, and the text flow didn't 
make any difference to Change Picture. It worked both ways.


Good luck,

Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com



> 
> Has anyone come across this particular quirk in Word? Any suggestions for a
> work-around would be great.


> 
> Thanks
> 
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