Symptoms
If you paste a range from Excel as a linked object in PowerPoint (Paste Special > Paste As Link), and then open the same file in a copy of Office with a different display language and update the links, you will find that the specific range you pasted gets expanded to the entire used range of the spreadsheet.
Example:
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Create a spreadsheet in English with data in the range A1 to A5, and also in C20.
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Copy the A1 to A5 range.
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In PowerPoint, choose Paste Special, and then Paste As Link. Save the file.
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Open the file in PowerPoint with German as the display language. The linked object will display the range A1 to C20.
Cause
The range is stored in a language locale-specific format. When PowerPoint tries to retrieve the data range using the other language locale, and Excel doesn't understand it and returns the full used range in the spreadsheet.
Resolution
Before copying the range in Excel (step 2 in the example above), name the range of cells.
This will make sure the range is identified correctly in the linked object across all language versions.