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Linking different parts of a file to Word doc

  1. #1
    Forum Expert teylyn's Avatar
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    Linking different parts of a file to Word doc

    Hi all,

    I have a Word document where in two different places I link to Visio drawings. My Visio drawings are in one file, on two different tabs.

    In Word chapter 1 I link to the Visio drawing on page 1, in Word chapter 2 I link to the Visio drawing on page 2. When I create the link, I edit the Visio file, click the page I want to display, save the Visio file, update the link and it is displayed fine. Same for the second drawing: open the link, select the page, save Visio, update link.

    My Word doc is quite complex and I have a lot of internal references that require updating when the document grows. The easiest way to do that is Ctrl-A to select all, then hit F9 to update all fields.

    BUT .... whenever I do that, BOTH of my Visio drawings will display the same page, i.e. the one I happened to have selected when I last saved the Visio document.

    So each time I update my fields, I have to go back to each linked drawing, edit with Visio, select the correct page, save, update Word link, go to next drawing, rinse and repeat.

    This scenario is quite simplified. My document is very big, with many links.

    Is there a way that I can exclude the linked files from updating when I hit F9, so I do not have to revisit dozens of linked drawings to bring the right one to the top?
    Or is there a way that I can quickly select only text, no links, in a 100+ page document?
    Or is there a way to specify which Visio page to display in the link? With Excel files, you can specify a range, but I just found out that apparently you can not specify another range in the same worksheet to be linked to the same Word doc.

    Any ideas?
    Last edited by teylyn; 07-22-2009 at 07:48 PM.

  2. #2
    Forum Expert teylyn's Avatar
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    Re: Linking different parts of a file to Word doc

    OK, after an hour of trying out things, I'm able to answer my own question:

    I was approaching things the wrong way. I went

    in Word: Insert - Object - Create from File - browse to file, select, OK, click Link to File, OK.

    This way, the page that was active when the file was last saved will be displayed.
    For Excel links, I could edit the first link (Edit - Links - Change Source - select file - click Item - enter range name - OK - OK), but that only worked for the first link, unless you also include the Excel sheet name in the item description, i.e. MySheet!MyRange, and for Visio I did not know how to specify an item.

    Now for the better way of doing this:

    Open Word file and Visio file
    In visio select page and then go Edit - Copy Drawing (if you hit CTRL-A and copy in Visio, the next step will not work)
    In Word go Edit - Paste special - click Paste Link - make sure Visio Object is selected. Paste link will not be selectable when you used Ctrl-A and copy in Visio (go figure).
    Repeat for all other Visio drawings.
    Go and check the links with Edit - Links and marvel at all the item information that Word has now filled in.

    Thanks Microsoft, that was really intuitive. Any reason why it would work one way, but noth the other?

    Duhh

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