Paste Link Fails to Create Network DDE Link in Excel (125955)

SYMPTOMS

Network DDE shares do not update properly in Excel running under Windows NT version 3.5. The problem occurs when Windows NT ClipBook Viewer is used to create a Network DDE share.

Steps to Reproduce Problem

Copy the contents of a cell in an Excel 5.0 or Excel for Windows NT spreadsheet.
Create a ClipBook page by copying the cell and then sharing the ClipBook page.
From a second computer, connect to the first computer's ClipBook and copy the contents of the page into the clipboard.
Using Excel on the second machine, execute a "Paste Link" command to copy the contents of the ClipBook page into an Excel spreadsheet.

The Excel spreadsheet does not update the data from the remote computer. Instead it displays "#REF" in the cell. (This process works as expected in Windows for Workgroups; the data is properly updated.)

CAUSE

The reference that is pasted into the cell is a local DDE reference rather than a proper Network DDE reference. The syntax of the string created by the Paste Link (on Windows NT 3.5) is something similar to:

   =Excel.Sheet.5|'$item1.ole'!'!Sheet1!R1C1'

The correct syntax to reference a Network DDE share through the ClipBook (the syntax created by Windows for Workgroups) is something similar to:

   ='\\SERVERNAME\NDDE$'|'$item2.ole'!'Sheet1!R1C1'

RESOLUTION

At this time, there is no workaround to create the DDE link using the ClipBook Viewer. One possible solution is to use the Network DDE Share Manager to create a Network DDE share, and access that share directly from the Excel spreadsheet.

Please refer to the documentation for Excel for information about DDE links. Refer to Knowledge Base article 114089 for information about using the DDE Share Manager.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT version 3.5. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.