XL97: Error Closing Workbooks That Contain DDE Links

When you close a workbook that contains Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) links to another program, you may receive the following error message: If you click Details, a message similar to the following appears:

This problem occurs when you do the following:

• You open several workbooks that each contain one or more DDE links to the same program. -and-
  
  
• You close all of the workbooks containing DDE links, or quit Microsoft Excel.

NOTE: This problem does not occur if you link to other Microsoft Office programs.

To correct this problem, install Microsoft Excel 97 Service Release 1 (SR-1).

To work around this problem, quit the program that the workbooks link to before closing the workbooks containing the DDE links.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows. This problem was corrected in Microsoft Excel 97 SR-1.

For additional information about SR-1, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

For each workbook you open that contain links to the same program, Excel creates a new DDE link to that program. However, when you close each workbook, Excel keeps each link to the other program open, instead of closing the link. When you close all the workbooks linked to the program, Excel will stop responding, and display the error message described in the "Symptoms" section of this article.

For more information about creating links using DDE, click the Index tab in Microsoft Excel Help, type the following text and then double-click the selected text to go to the "About using a formula to link data from programs not on your computer" topic.