Make sure that you've actually saved the Excel worksheet; if the worksheet doesn't have a filename yet, the link won't work properly. After you've done so, create the link again, specifying the filename you just created.
Word enables you to open an Excel worksheet directly, by choosing it in the Open dialog box and clicking Open. If you do this, the cells are placed in your document in the form of a Word table. Because Word cannot save in Excel format, when you resave the file it is converted to a Word file, and Excel cannot read it. If you've made changes, you can copy them manually into Excel, though you'll have to reformat them. If you need to make changes that will be readable in Excel, use the techniques described elsewhere in this chapter to create a link to an Excel document, rather than opening it directly.
If you want to copy an entire PowerPoint slide into your Word document, make sure that you're in PowerPoint's Slide Sorter view (choose View, Slide Sorter). If you're in Slide view (rather than Slide Sorter view), only the selected portion of your slide will be copied and pasted.
This can cause problems, because you'll lose formatting stored in the slide master (in other words, most formatting that is applied to the entire presentation, not just a single slide).
If you use File, Send To, PowerPoint, and Word displays an error message instead of opening PowerPoint, it's possible that you've recently installed the PowerPoint Viewer to view older PowerPoint files (perhaps files stored on the Internet or your intranet). You now need to reregister PowerPoint 2003 as the application you want to use with PowerPoint files. To do so, quit all Office programs and choose Start, Run. Then enter the following text in the Open box:
powerpnt /regserver
Click OK. If this does not work, run a maintenance install of Microsoft Office 2003 or Microsoft PowerPoint 2003.
The Microsoft Office Document Scanning applet is optimized to deliver the best possible optical character recognition for most scanned documents, and offers relatively few options for tweaking. However, there are a few things you can do if you're not satisfied with the accuracy of the OCR files generated from your documents:
Use the best preset? The software's default setting is Black and White, for documents with black text on white paper. If your documents are colored?for example, magazine articles or text printed on a color inkjet?be sure to switch to Black and White from Color Page.
Increase resolution? By default, Office scans at 300 dpi, which is usually the best trade-off between file size, speed, and OCR accuracy. However, most scanners support higher resolutions. To increase the resolution, display the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box. Click Preset Options, and choose Edit Selected Preset from the drop-down list. Display the General Tab, and click Advanced. In the Advanced Scan Settings dialog box (see Figure 29.36), choose a resolution higher than 300.
CAUTION
Remember to switch back to 300 when you're finished scanning your current document; otherwise, future scans will be unnecessarily slow, and will create unnecessarily large files.
Make sure that pages are being optimized for OCR? In the Preset Options dialog box, choose the Processing tab (see Figure 29.37). Make sure that the Auto Rotate and Auto Straighten check boxes are checked.
NOTE
If you're scanning text written in a language other than your system's default language, also choose the OCR Language from the drop-down box on this tab.