Content Manager 25.1 Content Manager

# Compound (linked) documents

Content Manager enables you to check in electronic documents that contain OLE links, for example, a Word document with an Excel spreadsheet within it that is updated when the original Excel file is updated.

The process of checking in a linked (compound) document is similar to checking in any other electronic document.

The creation of new records from linked (compound) documents is performed according to the default settings of the Record Type selected.

Difference between linked and embedded compound documents

- A linked document contains an active link to another electronic document or a portion of another document.

  The active link ensures that when the data in the second document is updated, the segment contained in the first document will be updated.

- An embedded document contains an inactive link to another electronic document or a portion of another document.

  The inactive link means that when the data in the second document is updated, the segment contained in the first document is not updated.

## Managing compound documents

- Content Manager cannot change a document's link information
- Content Manager merely stores compound documents as they have been created by the authoring application.
- Any editing or changes to the compound document or its links must be done in the authoring application.

For example, editing and creating new revisions of a parent document's linked child documents does not change the link information in the parent document.

The process of checking in compound documents is fairly straightforward; however, checking out, editing and the options for checking in compound documents may cause difficulties for users.

This arises from:

- The way in which OLE links are implemented by Office suites
- The many ways links can be created in those Office suites
- The reliability of those links even excluding third party electronic document management systems
- The different versions of the Windows operating system can recreate a parent document's links even if its linked child documents are moved from place to place in the file system.

  This is not so when using the authoring application or any other method to move linked child documents from Location to Location, including checking them out from Content Manager.

- The complexities of a networked working environment, including the absolute paths to each user's My Documents and Content Manager Offline Records folders, the possibility of network drives and shares being changed, moved or removed altogether
- The very real difficulties in enforcing reliable version control procedures amongst users
- The corresponding difficulties which arise from the flexibility of Content Manager in being able to manage revisions in many different ways:
  - Creating new revisions
  - Replacing existing revisions
  - Deleting previous revisions
  - Archiving records and their revisions
  - Having multiple parent documents pointing to a certain revision of a single linked child document and vice versa, etc.

It is suggested that:

- You keep compound documents as simple as possible if they are to be managed by Content Manager
- Instead of using Content Manager to manage compound documents and their links, each compound document to be stored in Content Manager should have its entire dependent documents collected and stored together, for example, in a .zip file.

  You can then check the .zip file in to Content Manager as a single item.

  Failing this, it is suggested that when you are creating compound documents, you add parent documents and linked child documents all to the same folder and create their links from within that folder.

  This will increase the chances of each document's links working when they are checked out to another Location, although does not guarantee it.

  You can still recreate links using the authoring application every time the parent document and its linked child documents are checked out to a Location other than the one from which they were checked in to Content Manager.

  ## Checking out compound documents

  When checking out a compound document, if the original compound child document still exists in the original location, then the linked document can be updated. If the document has been moved or deleted, the linked document content cannot be viewed or updated.

  Check out of multiple tagged records with attached compound documents is not supported.

  Each compound document needs to be checked out individually.

Copyright 2008-2025 Open Text
Version 25.1 | Last updated January 2025
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Product: Content Manager 25.1

Topic Title: Compound (linked) documents