09.28.07
Hey, Rocky! Watch me link from Microsoft Excel or Access to a Specific Place in a Word Document!
After numerous attempts, in various Microsoft Office versions, to create links from Excel or Access cells to a bookmark in a Microsoft Word file, I was about ready to give up.
See, both Excel and Access show an option to go to a bookmark. But when you try to use the bookmark, it says it can’t parse the Word file. Evidently Microsoft made the decision to keep these tools frustratingly unaware of each other’s innards. To Excel and Access, ‘Bookmark’ means one of their own or one imbedded in html and perhaps other non-Word applications. Anyway, I’d searched the web and even ventured into VBE-land for awhile but knew there had to be an easier way.
Then I remembered (doh!) from the old days of manual html that a Word Bookmark is basically the same principle as an HTML Target. And so I tried framing the reference as a target and it worked great — in various available versions of EXCEL and ACCESS.
Soooooooo… for those who want to keep tables but also have the ability to rapidly go to a specific place in a Word document, here goes:
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1) If you don’t already have a bookmark in a Microsoft Word document, make one. This entails clicking on the place you want to link to in the document. Then go to your menu and choose Insert and then Bookmark. Give the bookmark a name and save it by clicking ‘Add’. Save the file.
2) What you do next depends on whether you want to link from Excel or Access:
- Excel: If you are linking from an Excel file, just right-click over the cell that you want to use to link to the Word document and choose ‘Hyperlink’.
- Access: If you are linking from an Access file, you’ll want to create a place for the hyperlinks. Use the menu to choose Insert and then Hyperlink Column. Then just right-click over the cell that you want to use to link to the Word document and choose ‘Hyperlink’ and then ‘Edit Hyperlink’.
3) Use the screen that pops up to navigate to your document and click on it. Once its name appears in the box, just add the following at the end of the file name:
#whateveryounamedyourbookmark
4) Hit OK.
That’s all there is to it!
If you don’t remember what you named your bookmark, go back into Word. From the menu, choose Insert and then Bookmark. This will let you view your list of bookmarks.
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One thing to keep in mind is that, should you move the original Word file, Excel and Access won’t know how to find it anymore.
It would be great if you could store that location as a relative link, but evidently Access doesn’t allow relative linking. For more information on absolute links (which do work in Access) and relative links (which don’t), check out:
http://www.compugoddess.com/relvsabs.htm
Hope this information saves someone else some frustration along the way.
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On a side note, I am so excited as I await my copy of Microsoft Office 2007. I will finally be able to drag my ‘My Writing’ database into this century. Looking forward to experimenting with all the possibilities that the XML-based Word format provides. Plus, the ability to put multiple values in an ACCESS cell will be a tremendous time-saver and should allow for cleaner representations in forms and reports. Now, I just hope it doesn’t disappoint.
Vista — which I didn’t go out seeking, but came installed on my laptop when I bought it — was a major disappointment. Thanks bunches, but I don’t like it when my computer tries to second-guess me. Grrrrrrrrrr… if I wanted to click that, I would’ve clicked it!