OFF97: Memory Problems When Hyperlinking Between Programs

When you use hyperlinks to switch multiple times between your Web browser and Microsoft Office programs, your system slows down and begins to run low on available memory.

This occurs for two reasons:

• Programs are not necessarily released from memory when you switch away from them by clicking a hyperlink.
  
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• Clicking a hyperlink may result in the loading of a new instance of the program to which you are linking.

For example, if you click a series of hyperlinks that take you from Microsoft Internet Explorer to Microsoft Excel, then to Microsoft Word, then to Microsoft PowerPoint, and then back to Microsoft Internet Explorer, you may find that all of the programs are still loaded into memory and, in some cases, more than one instance of a program is in memory.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

All of the programs in Microsoft Office 97 include the ability to create hyperlinks. Hyperlinks allow you to "jump" to Internet or intranet web pages, or to documents in other Microsoft Office 97 programs.

It is possible to create a series of hyperlinks between programs. For example, an HTML document in Microsoft Internet Explorer can include a link to a Microsoft Excel workbook. That workbook can contain a hyperlink to a Microsoft Word document. That document can contain a hyperlink to a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, and so on.

When you click a series of hyperlinks, all of the programs in the series may load into memory. When you click a hyperlink to switch away from a program, you do not remove that program from memory. Also, because of the way in which Microsoft Internet Explorer loads programs, you may not see a button for the program on the taskbar.