The challenge is that the questionnaire is distributed to respondents and so it is much more convenient to have it contained in a single file. Trying to do it this way is also imposed by a constraint to have the hardcopy look identical to the "electronic" copy that respondents willl complete.

What I have come to learn is that when the link to the embedded spreadsheet object is first created, the field (displayed with Alt F9) has the corrrect path & filename for the Word doc. For example:

{Link Excel.Sheet.8 "c:\\test questionnaire.doc" "_1242205181!Sheet1!R1C1:R3C3" \a \p }

The first time the link is selected and you right click to open the link, the speadsheet opens but upon returning to the Word document, the field changes from the actual file name to:

{Link Excel.Sheet.8 "Worksheet in test questionnaire.doc" Sheet1!R1C1:R3C3"
\a \p }

When you then try to open this linked object again, Word says the the filename is invalid or the link is corrupt.

I have tried to replace the file name with the "filename \p" field, but Word overwrites this as well.

Any suggestions???