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Word Is Linking Back to Excel File That I Don't Need (or Want)

As background, I never use "paste link" when pasting a chart from Excel into Word and yet Word insists on creating a link back to the original workbook. I don't need or want the links because they cause all types of problems.  I've tried to fix this by going to "Edit Links in File" and "Break Link" but Word keeps a "Null" Source File link which then results in an error message.

Unfortunately, I can't use "Paste as..."

  • "picture" because I lose the ability to change the chart colors
  • "Microsoft Excel Chart Object" because it then embeds the workbook into the Word file (some of my Excel files are 10M

This leave me with the option of "Paste as Microsoft Office Graphic Object."  For what it's worth, about 20%-25% of the time, I can open a blank Excel file, create a chart and then paste the chart into a blank Word document and the links don't appear (but the other 80% of the time they do which is the problem).

Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I'm using Office 2010 on Windows 7.

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Office Community.

A quick question before we proceed.

Is the data in chart linked with any Excel Spreadsheet?

By default Word uses Excel feature to edit the chart data. Hence, when you copy a chart and paste it  as it is, the chart will be linked with the Excel file.

If you're pasting a specific chart from Excel Spreadsheet you could try one of the following and see if it helps.

1) Copy the corresponding data from Excel Spreadsheet, create a new chart based on the copied data, then copy it and paste it into Word.

2)  You may directly create a chart in Word based on the original Excel chart data.

Hope the above information helps. If you have further questions related to this issue, please let me know.


Thank you.

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Thank you for your reply. I can't build my charts in Word (the current document has 25 different charts, all driven by complex macros in Excel).

When you say "By default Word uses Excel feature to edit the chart data. Hence, when you copy a chart and paste it  as it is, the chart will be linked with the Excel file." I have not found this to be the case with about 20% of my Word documents.  It's a mystery to me, but sometimes the Excel chart in Word doesn't try to link back to the Excel file, which is what I want.  In fact, I've done this for at least 8 years going back to Office 2007 and have only noticed this problem in the past 4-5 months.

I suspect there is a setting I need to change in Excel, Word or Windows but I have yet to find it.  Or Microsoft changed something in the background during a recent update to Office.

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Last updated August 21, 2024 Views 1,205 Applies to: