Problems updating linked Excel 97 worksheet in Access 97

[Nevets]

I am having an intermittent problem that I need help with….
I have linked an Excel 97 worksheet into Access 97, and then am running update queries to post data from tables linked from SQL servers into fields in the worksheet.
The queries run successfully, and the data shows up in the worksheet if you open it in table view.
HOWEVER… when I actually go into the Excel file, the data is not there.
In Access, I can drop the link and then re-link, and I still see the updated data in the table view. But still in Excel the updated cells appear to be empty.
This problem seems to happen only occasionally, with no discernable pattern.
This particular operation is something I perform fairly regularly, and the majority of the time it works perfectly, saving considerable data entry into Excel for the users.
A couple of my coworkers have also experienced this same problem.
We are running Office 97 SR-2 under Windows NT4 SP4.

 

[B827]

In Access 97 I have found linked spreadsheets a nightmare - I never use this method now. I always use import and export. Even that can be interesting. I have used Access as an interface between Oracle and Excel and found that it was easiest to Export to a new spreadsheet everytime. If you have a template set up to export to you can set up Excel marcos to do formatting and Summation etc so minimal work is reqired. It's just a matter of running an Access procedure.

Sandy

 

[gswetzel]

I too have found Excel97 links to be quirky, but with care can be useful. Excel seems to have special sensitivity to drive paths, escpecally if using Microsoft networking software(strangely Novell is more reliable). I never use a mapped drive letter in the link, but rather the full network path. If more than one link in a workbook uses the same file name, Excel seems to get confused if the files are on different paths, so I never use the same file name for different links. You could also try linking Excel directly to the Oracle data, without Access, to reduce the chance of problems.