WD2000: MERGEFORMAT Switch Is Removed When You Change the Source of Link Field

When you change the source of a Link field that is contained in a Microsoft Word 6.0 for Windows or a Microsoft Word for Windows 95 document, the MERGEFORMAT switch that was added automatically by the Link field is removed.

NOTE: This problem occurs even if you save the Word 6.0/95 document as a Word document in Microsoft Word 2000 before you update the Link field.

To resolve this problem, obtain Microsoft Office 2000 Service Release 1/1a (SR-1/SR-1a).

To obtain SR-1/SR-1a, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: To temporarily work around this problem, you can manually add the MERGEFORMAT switch back the Link field. To do this, follow these steps:

1. In your Word document, press ALT+F9 to turn on the Link field code. You should see a Link field similar to the following:
   {LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\My Documents\\BOOK2.XLS" "Sheet1!R1C1" \a \r}
2. Add the MERGEFORMAT switch to the Link field. The Link field should look similar to the following:
   {LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\My Documents\\BOOK2.XLS" "Sheet1!R1C1" \a \r \* MERGEFORMAT}
3. Press ALT+F9 to turn off the field codes.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was corrected in Microsoft Office 2000 SR-1/SR-1a.

To change the source of a Link field in Word, follow these steps:

1. On the Edit menu, click Links.
2. In the Links dialog box, click Change Source.
3. In the Change Source dialog box, click the file that you want to update your Link field, and then click Open.
4. Click OK to close the Links dialog box.