Pasting Linked Charts from Excel -> Word, Link Breaks

Hi All,

I'm having an issue with pasting linked charts from an Excel workbook into a Word doc, and I'm hoping someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong. I've looked all over multiple forums to try to find someone who has the same issue, but I may not be using the correct wording.

I have an Excel spreadsheet that contains a bunch of data. I update the data monthly, then quarterly I make a Word doc that highlights changes in the data for that period. In the Word doc, I need to copy over charts that I have made from Excel, but hate the fact that I have to re-paste the chart each quarter with updated data, instead of having it update automatically with the new data. What I've began doing is copying the chart in Excel, then use the Paste -> Paste Special -> Paste Link -> Paste Excel Chart Object into the Word doc, that way I can simply right click it and select "Update" to update the chart with the new data when I inevitably have to complete the report again 3 months later.

However, when I open up the Word doc 3 months later to update the report again, the links for the charts between the Word doc and Excel appear to be broken EXCEPT the very first chart (which is probably the strangest part). If I have 30 charts that I have copied over, the first link remains intact, I simply right click and update, but all 29 others will be broken. They either give me the option to "update", which when clicked, an error message is displayed (something to the effect of the program can't find the linked data, then the chart disappears and a bolded-error message replaces it in the Word doc), or there is no "update" option which makes me think it has converted the charts from a linked chart to an image of some sort.

When I check the "Edit Links to Files" option in the Word doc, the first chart (the one that remains intact) has the correct info displayed in the Source file, Item, Type, categories. The remaining charts appear to have some butchering of the file path to the Excel spreadsheet (the spreadsheet is located about 7 folders deep, on a shared drive). For example, if the correct filepath to the Excel spreadsheet is C:/Red/Orange/Yellow/Green/Blue/Purple, the "Source file" category says Yellow, "Item" says eenblu, and "Type" says /CRedOrange. Hopefully that makes sense. Basically instead of having the entire filepath under "Source file" where it belongs, it has spread it among the different categories.

This issue seems to be related to length of time as well. The Word doc I did 6 days ago (which had broken links, so I had to go in a re-paste the charts) still has active links and operates fine.

I know this is a super detailed issue, but hopefully that all makes sense. Any advice on how to deal with this would be greatly appreciated. I have already suggested to my boss that we scrap the Word doc portion of the task altogether, and do everything in Excel, but that isn't gaining much traction...

Thanks in advance for your help!

Any ideas?