Live Links


1. Microsoft's Office Suite (Work, Excel, PowerPoint) automatically creates a "live link" when you  COPY a picture or chart and use the PASTE function to insert the copy in another document.  In this course this usually happens when a chart created in Excel is copied and pasted into a Word document.

2. The "live link" is the DEFAULT procedure and in the case of a copying from Excel into Word, essentially copies the entire Excel file into the Word document for each chart inserted. This allows you to amend or access the spreadsheet while displaying only the Word file. But unfortunately this creates very large Word files, particularly if numerous charts were inserted.

3. The correct procedure to copy a chart from Excel into a Word document is to use the PASTE SPECIAL  function  from the EDIT menu in Word  and paste the chart as a PICTURE. PASTE SPECIAL is not availble from the "right click" mouse function.

4. If your Word document is larger than 500Kb you should suspect that it contains "live links".

5. To remove the "live links" open your document in Word and at the same time also open a blank Word document. CUT AND PASTE all of the pictures and charts from your source document to the blank document. SAVE and CLOSE your source document (now without any pictures or charts) and check to see that its size is under 500Kb. Then re-open the source document and use the COPY and PASTE SPECIAL procedure to insert the charts as a PICTURE from the blank document back into your original file. Your document will now be free of "live links" and be substantially reduced in size.