Joe Habraken - Microsoft Office 2019 Inside Out

Microsofts object linking and embedding, or OLE, has been around since the early 1990s. With OLE, you can create compound documents that consist of data from more than one application. Breaking down the name (object linking and embedding) into its component parts is the easiest way to define what OLE actually is. An object can be anything from worksheet data or a chart in Excel, to a slide in PowerPoint, to an image in a Word document, to pretty much any selectable entity in any of the Office applications. OLE works with application objects.

Now lets tackle linking. When you link an object to a document or other application file, you are creating a connection between the source file and your current document, the container file. The object does not reside in the container; it is represented there by a linking code. When you update the object, the update occurs in the original source application, and the results of the update are reflected in the container. For example, you can link a Microsoft Excel worksheet to a Word document. When you activate the workbook with a double-click (or by right-clicking the worksheet and selecting Open Source), its source application (Microsoft Excel) is started and the linked workbook is opened in it. shows a linked workbook from Excel that has been linked to a Word document.

Figure A-1 A linked worksheet in a Word document with the Excel Source data.

Embedding gets the data into a document or presentation, but the information is no longer linked to the original source information in the other application, such as an Excel worksheet or chart. An embedded object becomes part of the destination file and increases that files size. It is basically a transplanted copy of the original data. Because the embedded file resides in the destination file, updating the original file in the original application does not update the embedded copy; there is no link between the two.

Embedded objects can be edited even though they are no longer communicating with their sources. However, because they now reside in a destination application such as Word or PowerPoint, the information is edited or manipulated within that particular destination application, but in a rather unusual way. When you activate an embedded object (double-click it), the server application opens inside the current application. For example, if you activate an Excel object such as an embedded worksheet in Word, the Word ribbon is replaced by the Excel ribbon while the worksheet object is activated. So, in essence, you are running the server application (Excel) from inside the application (Word) that holds the embedded object.

Another example of an embedded object is an Excel workbook (such as sales figures for your company) embedded in an Outlook appointment. You double-click the embedded Excel object to activate it. shows an embedded Excel worksheet that has been activated in an Outlook event (appointment).

Figure A-2 An embedded Excel workbook that has been activated in an Outlook appointment.

Note in that the ribbon typically found in the Appointment window has been replaced with the Excel ribbon. When you click outside the embedded worksheet, the various Appointment commands return to the ribbon.