With LinkFixerPlus, discover the missing link

April 3, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Most everyone using Microsoft Office has experienced the pain and suffering that comes from a broken link. Chances are that most PowerPoint presentations you write, for example, have links to files you created that contain graphic images and text that must be loaded into the different presentation slides.

But too often, those data files get moved, or worse yet, renamed by some well-intentioned individual that didn’t realize what they were for in the first place.

This event is more common that you may realize, especially when on a network where files are constantly being shared, accessed and changed by more than one person.

Fortunately there’s LinkFixerPlus that can report, find and fix broken links automatically when files are moved or renamed.

When speaking to LinkTek, I learned the story of how LinkFixerPlus was born.

It turns out that a former company employee named Susan had left the company. What wasn’t known at the time was that Susan had kept many of the company’s data files within a folder named “Susan.” After leaving, someone within the organization felt that it was inappropriate to have a folder bearing the name of an ex-employee and decided to change it to something more descriptive.

From that moment of change, everyone’s PowerPoint presentations that relied quite heavily upon the data within the Susan folder could no longer find the data. The results were disastrous.

The change was discovered only after a large investment of time and work. To prevent this from happening again, LinkFixerPlus was developed simply because the company’s officers discovered that there was nothing available at that time to correct this kind of problem.

LinkFixerPlus offers several utilities that all work to fix and maintain all of the links within any Microsoft Office document be it Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. To make sure that everything is linked correctly, LinkFixerPlus will scan large sets of files using global search and replace options. After generating reports on broken links within all of the documents, you can use LinkFixerPlus to reconnect everything back. Generating a regular report displays a list of each file followed by a list of files to which it links. A cross-reference report lists each linked file followed by a list of all the files that point to it.

After all the re-linking work is done, the next step is prevention. LinkFixerPlus lets you “inoculate” the files by safeguarding their healthy links. Once inoculated, Office will be able to keep track of all of these files no matter if they are moved or even renamed. These files are prepared by LinkFixerPlus in such a way so that in the event their links are broken, they will be automatically repaired.

LinkFixerPlus works with most versions of Windows and is available in single and multiple user license pricing. LinkFixerPlus Gold supports all of Microsoft Office’s applications while there are versions of LinkFixerPlus that work with individual applications separately. Check LinkTek’s website for more information by going to www.linktek.com.

Craig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. He also hosts the No. 1 daily national computer radio talk show, “Computer America,” heard on Business TalkRadio — Monday through Friday, 10 p.m.-midnight. For more information, visit his website at www.computeramerica.com.

2011, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services