Linking from Excel to Word

[Barbara White]

Using Word 2000 on Windows 2000.

We are experimenting converting a document from FM to Word. The Word
document will be about 200 pages and will contain about 50-60 linked
charts--charts that we've created in Excel that we want to link to the
Word files. (So that whenever the Excel source changes, the Word file
version of the chart will change also.)

I know that Word gets buggy when you do certain things or if you work
with really large files. A 200-page document isn't huge, but I don't
know how these linked charts will affect stability and size.

Do you have comments about this...is it risky to add so many linked
items to a Word file?

Thanks.
Barbara

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Barbara,

Using Word 2000 on Windows 2000.

We are experimenting converting a document from FM to Word. The Word
document will be about 200 pages and will contain about 50-60 linked
charts--charts that we've created in Excel that we want to link to
the Word files. (So that whenever the Excel source changes, the Word
file version of the chart will change also.)

I know that Word gets buggy when you do certain things or if you
work with really large files. A 200-page document isn't huge, but I
don't know how these linked charts will affect stability and size.

Do you have comments about this...is it risky to add so many linked
items to a Word file?

not so easy to give a definite answer. 200 pages is indeed not much,
I've setup documents containing more links (to Excel charts as well) and
it worked for me. A couple of things to consider:

- Get enough RAM. And then some more. A fast processor is fine, but I'd
rather work on 500 MHz with 1 GByte of RAM than on 2GHz with 256 MByte
RAM, for instance.

- If you really need "live" charts, I'd insert them via copy | paste
special: linked picture format. And I'd keep the (possibly various)
XLS-files with the DOC-file in the very same folder. If at any point
during the lifetime of this document, your path (new server, for
instance) is changing, that's about the only measure that might help
you.

- Something "semi-live" might be to use INCLUDEPICTURE-fields in Word
that point to a previously saved chart picture file. Now the only point
would be to make sure you have an easy method to create these files
(say, export all charts to individual files on mouseclick and/or
whenever any one changes). This is probably asking for VBA in Excel,
both not my line at all. (Powerpoint, for instance, has a neat export to
WMF for all slides in a presentation, not sure whether Excel has
something similar which would work if your charts are in separate tabs
each.) But there are people far more knowledgable in here who can
estimate whether this whole process is worth a possible gain in
stability.

2cents
..bob
...Word-MVP