Excel - annoying links...

[Not Mike]

Does anyone else have the following problem and is there any way to fix it:

I have a group of sheets that are linked together... sometimes, when I open the one of the sheets, the references won't be working (i.e. the link will be pulling the wrong value)... I can open the other sheet (the one it's linked to), then the link will update, and I'll save both sheets again.... later on, when I'm working with the same sheets again, I'll open the one sheet and the links won't be working again... this is basically an endless cycle where I can't always trust the sheets to have the correct values in them....

any suggestions? (by the way, it's Excel 97 and these are pretty large sheets)

[NoName]

The best solution is to never, ever use links. If you must, you can always update manually from edit|links. If this routinely does not work you may want to try to redesign.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: NoName on 2002-03-13 12:48 ]</font>

[urysohn]

never use links? If only that were realistic.

Excel 95 had a similar problem, for which Microsoft had a patch on their website. You could try searching the microsoft site for something like "excel 97 link patch"

[josie]

We've noticed this problem also. Sometimes it is because the sheet that it is linked to also had a linked sheet that was not saved with its updated links. (I hope this makes sense!)

[Cho Da]

Which is why links are dangerous.
External links are a poor solution to managing spreadsheets that are too big.
Seriously consider redesigning and/or using more appropriate tools.

[Not Mike]

Thanks for the suggestions...

After looking for a patch, it appeared as though my version already had the patch for that problem... oh well....

My sheet is linked to other sheets that are linked to etc... unfortunately, linking is a MUST... I'm working with far too much data to do otherwise.... I do build in a lot of checks to make sure that the links are working, but I'd rather have this problem than have no links....

[Arlie_Proctor]

One design issue that will cause this error is creating workbooks that are interlinked such that workbook A depends on B which in turn depends on A (or an even more complex linking with many sheets).

If you make sure that you have no inter-related workbooks, you can usually solve the problem by writing VBA that opens each workbook in turn, calculates it, and then saves it.

I have also experienced problems with workbooks that contain more than one sheet sometimes failing to update links on sheets 2 thru ??? where sheet #1 links to cells in subsequent sheets that link to other workbooks. Solving that one is really nasty. If you're using several linked workbooks, I would recommend that you stick to one worksheet per workbook.