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Lance Lance is offline
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Default A link between two workbooks doesn't keep the value, shows #va

Dave,

I actually did try the registry hack described by Jim and it did appear to
work, but deploying that to the masses would be difficult. That being said,
I opened up a case with Microsoft on this and the lady I spoke with said that
the registry change can work, but they have also seen it cause issues with
mis-calculating some formulas.

She said that the reason it's doing what it is can be explained in that the
spreadsheet with the links in it was created and saved in Excel 2003 and then
when an Excel 2007 client opens it, it sees that it was created in a
different version and immediately wants to update all of the links and
calculations (even if you tell it not to).

So unfortunately, this is by design, but breaking the link before sending is
one option to get around the issue (along with the registry change and/or a
copy and paste special). Also, I believe if the person who saves is is using
Excel 2007, the issue will be gone for other Excel 2007 clients.

Supporting document:
925893 External links may be updated in Excel 2007 when you open a workbook
that was last saved in an earlier version of Excel
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;925893

Lance

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

Did you try changing the windows registry setting that Jim described in his
post?

Lance wrote:

Thanks for the information, but I do question it a little in that if I open
the same spreadsheet in Excel 2003, all of the cells with =sumif() formulas
in them contain valid data results as I would expect (even though I don't
have access to the source spreadsheet in the formulas link). In 2007
however, I can only get those results if automatic calculation is turned off.

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

The =sumif() formula doesn't work in any version of excel if the sending
workbook is closed.

But the way the cells with links are displayed if the links aren't updated did
change (I think with xl2k).

Jim Rech posted a registry tweak:
http://groups.google.com/groups?thre...GP11.phx .gbl

You'll have to change the version number in Jim's post.

Lance wrote:

I guess my big question here is why did this appear to work in Excel 2003,
but not now in Excel 2007? It used to be that users would elect not to
update the links and then in the spreadsheet they received via e-mail, it
would have the data still contained within the spreadsheet--though it was
stale, at least it was there.

Now in Outlook 2007, it appears as if the data is no longer available unless
it can update the links OR unless I save the file locally, open excel by
itself, turn calculation of formulas to manual, then open the spreadsheet
from within Excel 2007. Any thoughts on this and how to get it to function
as it did in Excel 2003?

Much appreciated!
Lance

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson