Updating Automatic Links

You already know that Word allows you to include many different elements in your documents, such as pieces of Excel worksheets, sounds, graphics, and other objects. You may even know that you can establish active links with these objects so that any changes in the objects can be reflected in your document, as well. You may not know, however, that you can control whether Word automatically updates links when you open a document. You control this feature in this manner:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. At the left side of the dialog box click Advanced.
3. Scroll through the available options until you see the General section. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The advanced options of the Word Options dialog box.

4. Set the Update Automatic Links At Open check box as you desire.
5. Click OK.

Why would you not want to automatically update links when you open a document? The chief reason is time—if your document contains quite a few links, or if the source of those links is hard to reach (perhaps through a network), then opening your document can be extremely slow. To speed up opening your document, turn off automatic updating and things should be fine. Of course, if you want to make sure you have the latest updates of your linked objects, you will need to update them manually, or simply turn on the option and reopen your document.

Note, as well, that the links that this setting controls are OLE links, meaning things that are inserted into your document where you specify, in the insertion, that the source be linked. If you have other types of links, including hyperlinks, those are not affected by this setting and may still be updated automatically when opening the document.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6115) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Updating Automatic Links.