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I have used linked excel tables or worksheet object in word documents for years without any issues until yesterday 8/8/22.
Out of nowhere the "Linked Worksheet Object", or the excel table that I linked into word (paste special > paste link > microsoft excel worksheet object), changed to an "object" after the word doc was saved, closed and opened again.
Before yesterday, I could right-click on the linked table, or "Linked Worksheet Object", and select "Update Link" and any changes I made to the table in the linked excel file would appear in the word doc. Now, I right-click on what is now an "object" and select "Update Link" and nothing happens. Strangely, if I right-click on the linked table, select "object", then "Links...", and then "Open Source", the "object" reverts back to a "Linked Worksheet Object" and updates as usual.
But after saving, closing, and opening the word document again the "Linked Worksheet Object" changes back to an "object" again and I have to take the same steps to update a linked table in word after changes made to it in excel.
This is happening in the Word and Excel provided by the Microsoft 365 Personal subscription. I am using a Dell Latitude 3500 and Surface Pro 7 under this subscription but am only having this issue when using the Dell Latitude 3500. I have checked all the Options in Word & Excel and they are the same on both computers. I have also checked the Registry Editor and everything related to Word & Excel looks to be the same on both.
What is going on? Better yet, how do I fix this and get back to normal?
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I have received information on this bug from a contact at Microsoft: "We received reports of this from our enterprise customers and a bug was opened. The fix should be in the next monthly update, January fork (Version 2302). December fork is rolling out to Production now (build 16026, version 2301)." So relief is in sight!
I am up against the same issue with linked objects converting to links that don't function on re-open. I was able to action one suggestion in this forum as a work-around to this obvious bug. I put all the links correctly into my file with the Copy Paste Special, Paste Link as usual & I did this in my .docx file. I then saved a copy of this file as .doc The benefit of this is that the .doc file maintains the healthy link on close and re-open. When I re-open the .docx file (each time) I will batch paste the healthy links from the .doc file. This has been much faster than double clicking links or re pasting links each time as I have 10+ links in a file. This is an obvious hack, but I can't roll back to a previous version. Hopefully a bug fix for this is coming soon.
We were finally able to get our links to work again after we had our IT company uninstall MS Office and reinstall MS Office version 2202.
Reverting back to 2202 worked for me as well.
Jeremy,
Yes, as long as I open the Excel source document first and then open the linked Word document, the automatic links have been updating. I had to re-do all of the linked tables first, though. It didn't work to just switch from manual over to automatic. This was a very time-consuming process, but the new links have held up so far.
Meghan (or anyone),
Have you found that switching the links to "Automatic" actual resolves the issue? I have not, updating table links still requires that I double-click on each table to open in Excel and then update (F9) each linked table.
On my end, there is still in no ability to Update All (Alt+A, F9) and ensure that all tables within a document are current.