Re: Hyperlinks to Word Boookmark (Office 97 SR2)

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I have a Word document with an accompanying Excel spreadsheet. If I open the spreadsheet first, the first hyperlink to a bookmark in the Word file goes correctly to the bookmark (also switches the active window).

Subsequent clicking on hyperlinks in the Excel file doesn’t seem to do anything. It doesn’t change the active window, and in the Word session, it doesn’t go to the bookmark. The ones that don’t work as second clicks do work if they’re the first hyperlink clicked.

If I open the Word document first, then click the hyperlink to open the Excel file (hides the Word file, as explained in another thread), then click a hyperlink back to a bookmark in the Word document (the way I expect people to use this), it redisplays the Word file that was hidden when hyperlink to Excel was clicked but it doesn’t change the active Window to Word and it doesn’t go to the bookmark.

Question1: how can I make the links work (so that clicking a link from Excel goes to Word to the correct bookmark, always)?

Question2: I tried to get around this by copying the formatted chapters to worksheets in the Excel file (as document objects or pictures, to get the formatting), but it only copied one page-worth of the text. What’s the deal there? All my bookmarks were to the heading 1 lines in the Word document anyway, so I thought that would be a second-best idea.

I tried pasting as text, a third-best idea, figuring I’d have to reformat everything and set up heading styles, but the text lines just go on forever and wrap text does something too bizarre to deal with.

Is there some reasonable way I can expect to have people go from links on a spreadsheet to bookmarks in formatted text, now that I already have a Word document with the formatted text? Or do I have to type it all in or copy it into Excel paragraph by paragraph?

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Wendy,

I also find it most frustrating the way Word and Excel work when using hyperlinks to other files. I think that the previous file should remain behind the active page, so you can easily go back to it. I had not previously tried what you do, going from Excel97 to Word97, but had the same problems you indicated.

However I did find that in this case if I used the Web Toolbar I could go back and forward like in IE, and that made things better. The Web toolbar does not automatically come up in this situation, as it would if it was an internet link you opened. If you have not already done so, you might like to try using the Web toolbar.

Good Luck!

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I do always use the web toolbar; in this case, I was trying to provide hyperlinks to specific bookmarks. But if that’s not going to work, I should at least remember to save the web toolbar activated in the documents, so your comment was helpful. Thanks.

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Wendy

OK there seems to be a glitch with Hyperlinks and saving the documents/workbooks. I suggest you goto the MSKB http:// search.support.microsoft.com/search/default.aspx and check for documents that have to do with Hyperlinks.

Also I think, just as you mentioned “that other thread”, that if you save your doc/workbook then maybe things will work. Try it!

Wassim

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Thanks for the link to the KB articles. I’ve looked them over and several seem to imply that it’s not going to work correctly, though none that I found states my problem exactly. I’m totally flummoxed. I suppose if the hyperlinks are going to work only very occasionally, I may as well not bother putting them in the Excel file. I can have one link to the Word doc and let people do their own navigating, if that’s what they’ll generally have to do.

The files have both existed for a long time – it’s not a matter of their being unsaved files.

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Wendy,

Since I recall doing something like this some time ago for a client, I tried it on my machine here at home running Excel 97 SR2 (same as you).

It worked perfectly.

I opened a Word doc (call it Genealogy, since that’s what it is) and defined 2 bookmarks CDs and URLs.

I then inserted a hyperlink in a cell to the file Genealogy and location CDs. I inserted another hyperlink to same file but location URLs. (Had to know the name of the bookmarks since Excel would not let me browse locations for a non-Excel file – great Office integration at work again).

I then closed the Word doc. Clicked on the cell w/ CDs hyperlink. The Word doc was opened and the insertion point positioned to the CDs bookmark. The Word window came forward (I had it open for another document). I then clicked on the Excel task on the task bar. Excel came forward. Clicked on the cell w/ URLs hyperlink. Word window came forward and the insertion point was positioned at the URLs bookmark.

Tried a few other combinations. They all seemed to work as expected.

Fred

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Thanks for the reply Fred. I wish I had the same results as you. Everything I did was the same up to where the Word doc opened from the Excel link to the correct bookmark. But when you say “I then clicked on the Excel task on the task bar. Excel came forward”, when I did that, an empty Excel window came forward. Problem 1. That’s a different thread somewhere, and I think there’s no answer for that either. I don’t know why that works in the obviously reasonable way for you. The only way for me to get back to the spreadsheet is to hit the back arrow on the web toolbar.

After I hit the back arrow, when I click on another hyperlink, nothing apparently happens. Word does not activate. When I then click on Word on the taskbar, it has not moved from the first bookmark to the one whose hyperlink I just clicked.

These documents are on an NT LAN. Maybe that’s what makes a difference.

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Just a very stray thought. [indent]

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The files have both existed for a long time – it’s not a matter of their being unsaved files.

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[/indent] Could that mean that they might be derived from files set up in earlier versions of Word/Excel? Fred’s success may be due to freshly created files. HTH

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Don’t knock the stray thoughts. I’d have said that it wasn’t an earlier version of Word/Excel (it was just about one year ago), but this nudged me to redo the links. They read the same, but right now, they seem to work!

It’s terribly inconsistent. The first time I tested it, I didn’t lose the Excel file (so was able to click on Excel on the taskbar); then I closed the Excel file and opened it again, and then when I tried it, I did lose the Excel file so I had to use the back arrow on the web toolbar. But the links still worked. I wonder if there’s some rule operating that I could explain to people (and myself) re: when you can click on the taskbar and when you need to use the web toolbar.

I see that the web toolbar being available goes with the user’s profile, not the file, unless I activate it via a macro. I wasn’t successful before in getting a macro to stay with a file.

I hope I don’t have to write back later to say it was just some peculiar set of circumstances that made it work. It’s doing just what I want.

Thanks for looking after me today, unkamunka (in the Outlook group as well!).

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Have you tried taking both files and testing them on a completely different machine? Maybe a “clean run” can show some other factors at play.

I don’t have a proper 97 OS set up at the moment. My memory seems to have recollections of the Web Toolbar popping up every time you clicked a Hyperlink whether you like it or not (even if you strip every single button off it), but maybe that’s because I’ve been using 2000 so heavily. HTH

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Ta da! They all work. Right now.

The secret is a rule I’ve been aware of for a long time: you have to really really want it to work and have to redo what you know is the right procedure seven times. Thanks to all the people to confirmed that it should work.

I’m going home before I run into the ‘two-clicks on a hyperlink and it dies’ rule.

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Edited by Phil Rabichow on 04-Jan-02 18:38.

Hi Wendy:
I saw your post over on the Word board re bookmarks. Regarding links & keeping the first document open, I seem to recall that in Office 97, that didn’t happen by default. You had to add a

n

switch. They fixed this in Office 2000.

Hope this helps.

Note: Upon re-reading this, I edited it because I put the n switch as /n incorrectly, and misspelled “had” as add.

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Thanks, Phil. I’m not sure I understand what to add it to – do you mean right after the hyperlink, you add that? So http://some/link.htm/n? That’s in the dialog box where you set up the link?

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Hi Wendy:
If you press Alt+F9 to view codes, you’ll see that the hyperlink field is: { Hyperlink “http://some/link.htm” }

Just make it: { Hyperlink “http://some/link.htm” n }

Remember that it’s a backslash, not a forward slash before the switch.

Hope this helps.

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Ok, I see that that works from Word to Excel. Now I get to bring this back to the appropriate group : can I do this in Excel?

I don’t see anything about field codes in Excel, except I did find the syntax for the HYPERLINK function. I tried
=HYPERLINK(“[UNC for the LAN driveREFERENCMISDOCProcessingGuidesspecproc.doc n]ACTIVITY_CODES”,”startup”)
but that didn’t work any differently than without the n (it got there, but closed the Excel file). The other locations for n that I tried were invalid syntax.

If there is some syntax that works, I also need to know if I have to replace all the existing hyperlinks with hyperlink functions or is there some way to correct the existing link to what I need directly?

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Hi Wendy:
I forgot that this started as an Excel question. I don’t know the syntax for Excel, or even what fields are available. In general, the n, being a switch, would go outside the quotes which represent the path. And there would be a space before the switch.

Assuming that there is an appropriate syntax for Excel, could Find/Replace work? I’m not familiar with Excel’s F/R. Also, I noticed that with Excel 2000 (so I don’t know if this is true with 97), if I right click a link, there is a hyperlink command on the menu, which opens another menu that contains the option “Open in New Window. Maybe this can help.?

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You’re saying it would look like:
=HYPERLINK(“[LANdirREFERENCMISDOCProcessingGuidesspecproc.doc]ACTIVITY_CODES” n,”startup”) ?
That’s one of the many possible syntax errors I tried.

The right click … open in new window works. I’ll add that to the documentation (though I do believe NO-ONE reads documentation). So presumably that executes some command. When I recorded that action, the code was:
Selection.Hyperlinks(1).Follow NewWindow:=False, AddHistory:=True
I don’t know what to do with that info. It appears to me to say the opposite of what happened, and I don’t want macro code anyway. Anyone know if I can I turn that into a function?

Have a happy new year, y’all. And don’t hang around rushing an answer to me tonight . I’m off now till Wednesday. Well, I suppose it’s the end of the day for most of you by now anyway.

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This is SO inconsistent. It worked the day you told me about this, Phil, and it worked a few times today. But I was testing a few combinations of going back and forth from the taskbar or via the back arrow on the web toolbar, and now the n in Word doesn’t even work any more. Even worse, I started getting error messages about the Excel spreadsheet already being open when it wasn’t visible and could not be made to be visible.

I think it’s best to stay with my original explanation about the flakiness of the way the two apps work together and just give people options to try to get back and forth.

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Hi Wendy:

Just to let you know, sometimes Excel or Word doesn’t shut down correctly. I’ve closed Word where it seemed to close normally. But when I try to restart it with a shortcut key, it doesn’t restart. When I Ctrl+Alt+Del, I see that winword is still active & I have to End Task. That might have happened to you with Excel. Just something to keep in the back of your mind the next time you get such a message (or things act strangely).

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See my reply saying redoing the bookmarks worked and I hoped it would continue to work. Well, that didn’t take long to dash my hopes.

What I think I’ve just learned (though I can’t be sure) is that the links I’ve set by clicking on the browse button work, but when I’ve selected the path from the drop-down list of previous links, they don’t. I have my doubts, though, because surely I tested that before I went and did them all that way. I didn’t use the dropdown list until I had used the browse button many times. Maybe it gets populated from the already set (not funtioning) hyperlinks and not from the new ones I’ve set. I’d have thought that was just text characters in that box and it wouldn’t matter as long as it read the same way. Or maybe links only have a shelf-life of two tries and then they die. Hey Fred, did you test yours three times? Nevermind.

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The other thing that is happening is that some of the links go to the heading in the table of contents for the section that has the bookmark instead of going to the bookmark. I’ve deleted the bookmarks for these and re-added them, then redone the TOC, then redone the link in Excel. I also removed some bookmarks that were no longer being used. In one case that fixed it. In another, it didn’t.

I haven’t tried your entirely new locations idea. I’d still have to redo the links when I move the documents to their real location. Every time I set a link, I remove the old one, then do the new one as a separate operation.

Well, I’m way ahead of where I was before. Today anyway.

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Wendy,

I’m wondering if we’re doing exactly the same thing.

You said:
>>The only way for me to get back to the spreadsheet is to hit the back arrow on the web toolbar.

>>After I hit the back arrow, when I click on another hyperlink, nothing apparently happens.

My experiment was strictly in Excel and Word. It almost sounds like you’re viewing your Excel document in IE. I’m definitely not using the web toolbar that pops up.

I just tried the same experiment in Office 2000 here at work where I put both the Excel doc and the Word doc on a shared drive on our LAN. I opened the Excel doc from the shared drive and then did the same things as I did the other day from home (just on my harddrive). It worked the same.

It’s a little harder in 2000 to create a link to a Word bookmark from Excel. In fact, I discovered a misdirected link in the Excel help on creating a hyperlink to a place in another Office document (it points to the same help page as creating a link to an Excel name). But struggled thru it and it worked fine.

Sorry can’t help anymore.

Fred

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Thanks, Fred and unkamunka. I’m looking at both files in their native application. I just always have the web toolbar available, so I don’t know about its popping up. I would expect MS to have got this working better by Office 2000.

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