Linking slides to Excel in PP

[matthewR]

I am testing my PowerPoint presentation to see what happens when I refresh the PP slides.

When you refresh the slides, do you have to have the Excel Sheets open? I have 39 spreadsheets for the presentation. For example one spreadsheet has 3 areas I have to link on the first slide (other slides are also like this). Two are data and one is a chart. I linked each area to the Excel spreadsheet. Now when the spreadsheet is updated with new information, does it have to be open? Once I get all the slides linked to the 39 spreadsheets, can I just open the PP presentation and all slides will be updated? Or should I update each slide separately? This seems like a lot of work.

I just opened the PP Presentation and it says to Update links. When I click on update links, it says "the linked file is not available", "Use the Edit Link command to find the file". I am testing this on my C drive which is not a trusted area - could that be my problem? I have the Excel sheet open.

I had the Excel sheet open and I get that message but when I click on it to close it and go to the slide, the slide has the changes. I closed the spreadsheet and opened the PP presentation and I get an additional message saying "Some linked files were unavailable and can't be updated. Try to restore the links by clicking the Microsoft Office button, pointing to prepare and then clicking edit links to files. So, I am assuming the Excel sheet has to be open to update links.

[HansV]

No, the workbook does not have to be open - when you open the presentation and click to update the links, PowerPoint will open the workbooks in the background (or even in the foreground - it has a tendency to leave Excel open in front of its own window...)

If the linked files are not available, try creating the links anew. If that doesn't help, you might make the folder containing the workbooks a trusted location, although I'm not sure it is relevant to links.

[matthewR]

I am only testing so I am doing this on one slide with one excel spreadsheet so far.

I moved the PP presentation to a trusted location as well as the spreadsheet. I removed the links and created new links. I closed the spreadsheet and opened the PP presentation - I still get that first message (not the second one). I just click to close the message and go to the slide and the changes are there so I am not sure why I get the message saying it can't find the file but the slide has the changes. So, I guess aside from the extra click to close the error message, it works.

[HansV]

This problem appears to be a known bug in the initial release of PowerPoint 2007: see Error message when you try to update a link in a PowerPoint 2007 presentation: "Some linked files were unavailable and can't be updated". It is supposed to be fixed in PowerPoint 2007 SP2 - have you installed the latest service pack? There is also a HotFix available: Description of the PowerPoint 2007 hotfix package: February 19, 2008.

[matthewR]

I guess the powers that be didn't install the service pak. I probably can't use the Hotfix since we can't download. Since the slides update even after getting that message, I will just go with that. Thanks for the information. At least I know it is a known bug.