Microsoft Word has a powerful feature known as Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). If you copy a chart or a table from Microsoft Excel and paste it into Word using the “Link Data” option, the two files become tethered together. By default, whenever you open that Word document, it will silently reach out to the original Excel file in the background, automatically update the numbers in the table, and refresh the document.
While this ensures your reports are always accurate, it is incredibly dangerous if you need to preserve historical records. If you are opening an invoice from 2023, you absolutely do not want Word to automatically update the pricing table to reflect the new 2024 rates stored in your master Excel sheet.
To preserve the integrity of your documents, you must stop Word from automatically refreshing these linked objects.
How to Turn Off Automatic Link Updating
You can configure Word to require your explicit permission before pulling data from external files.
- Open your document in Microsoft Word.
- Click on File in the top-left corner of the ribbon.
- Click on Options at the bottom of the left sidebar.
- In the Word Options window, select Advanced from the left-hand navigation pane.
- Scroll all the way down the right pane until you reach the General section near the very bottom.
- Look for a checkbox labeled Update automatic links at open.
- Uncheck this box.
- Click OK to save your changes.
From this point forward, when you open a Word document containing an Excel chart or table, the data will remain completely frozen exactly as it was when the document was last saved. If you wish to update the data, you will have to right-click the table and manually select “Update Link.”