LinkFixer Lives Up to Its Name

Document linking isnt designed for moving files, as anyone who moves files around frequently can attest. Enter LinkTeks LinkFixerPlus for Microsoft Office, a $199 utility that takes the hassle out of updating embedded links to other Office documents within an Office document.

LinkFixerPlus did a good job of finding and fixing broken links in Office documents. I found the initial setup could be a bit cumbersome, especially if the user has hundreds of documents scattered around his or her hard disk drive and network drives, but the effort pays off. Another shortcoming is that LinkFixerPlus for Microsoft Office works only on Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

The product can inoculate files so that the links within a document will be updated automatically when any child documents move (see screen, above). The product license limits the number of fixable links to 500,000, so those who really have a lot of document links must be judicious when picking which documents to inoculate. Keeping links up-to-date requires regularly running LinkFixerPlus because it tracks child documents with embedded file codes.

LinkTek offers $119 versions for each of the three Office documents as well as a $199 Webmaster version for common Web file formats. A Gold version, which combines the Office and Webmaster versions, sells for $398. LinkFixerPlus is available at www.linkfixerplus.com.