Microsoft Project 2007: The Missing Manual

Chapter 21. Linking and Embedding

While managing projects, you need different types of information all at the same time. That’s why so many project managers have a corkboard plastered with several layers of printed pages or a computer screen with a dozen windows open at once. To see information without opening every program you own, you take information created in one program and display an editable copy of it in another program. This visual exchange goes in either direction: Project data can appear in other programs like Excel and PowerPoint, or information from other programs can appear in Project.

You have two choices: linking and embedding. Linking means connecting directly to information in one program from another program. For instance, a PowerPoint slide can display a high-level schedule from Project. When you update the schedule in Project, that latest, greatest version automatically appears in PowerPoint. Similar to linking, embedding places a copy of an object (like a spreadsheet or Visio diagram) from one program into another. The embedded object and the original file aren’t linked, so you don’t automatically see changes made in the original. But embedded objects are ideal when you want to send colleagues self-contained files.

Here are the differences between linking and embedding:

• Linking means that the data remains in the source file, and the destination file merely displays the source file data. With linked objects, updating takes care of itself, because the data in the ...