Turn off Auto Update of linked info – Word 2010

Topic

New Reply

I have a word 2010 document that contains links to an excel 2010 spreadsheet. Every time I open the word document, it insists on opening the excel spreadsheet to update each and every link. The word doc has about 50 links to the same spreadsheet so it opens it 50 times. To stop myself from going completely crazy, I have to open the spreadsheet first and then open the word doc.

How to I tell word not to automatically update these links?

By way of background …
1) I am using link field code to pull in the info from excel (the A link is not present)
2) the ‘file / options / advanced / general / Update automatic links at open’ option is UNCHECKED
3) Edit, Links shows the links dialog box and all links show as ‘Man’

If I open an excel file that has links, it asks if I want to update them. I would love a nice, friendly dialog box like this to pop up for word too.

Reply | Quote

Replies

You could add the ‘edit links’ button to the QAT and make sure all the links are set to manual update. You could probably also lock the fields via Ctrl-F11 (and unlock them for updating via Ctrl-Shift-F11)

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Reply | Quote

All links are already set to manual.

I have never heard of locking fields – I just tried it and it seems to work very nicely. How do you tell that the fields are locked? I can imagine someone opening this word doc months down the track and not understanding why the fields don’t update.

Reply | Quote

I don’t think there’s anything to indicate that a field is locked. You could, perhaps, add a Document_Open macro to the document to advise about the links being locked, and asking the user whether to update (which the macro could do in response to a ‘yes’ answer, by unlocking, updating then re-locking).

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Reply | Quote

Update: The ‘Edit / Links’ dialog box shows locked links as ‘Locked’ instead of Man or Auto.

Reply | Quote

Hi there

I found your question, as I was having the same issue, but I found how to make them manual.

If you right click on the linked document in the one your are linked to (Office 2010) at the bottom of the list is a “Links” option. Take this.

This gives you a screen where you can highlight all your links and make them “Manual” as opposed to automatic. When you first do this they will update. But from there it should only need doing when you want to update them.

I am certainly going to give this a go, as I have approx. 70 links for my draft financial statements.

Reply | Quote