Lotus 123 spreadsheet links in Word

Hi all,

Moving a new client from Windows 98, Office 2000 & Lotus 123 5.2 to XP and Office 2007.
The trouble is, not all the spreadsheet links work.

It's a small engineering company, and for their technical documents they have some very complex Lotus 123 spreadsheets, which they link to their Word docs and the information is updated directly.
Both the Word and docs and the 123 docs are large, not massively complicated though.

The trouble is only hald the links work.
All these docs are one user's PC whihc I backup to the server. They had no backup at all for 8 years. Yup.
Obviously I moved the documents to thexact same folder, in this case C:\Proyecto\......
Some of the merge data comes through correctly, but some of them say it can't find the data source.
The fields that work use the syntax {LINK 123WORKSHEEET C:\\Proyecto......}
and the ones that don't seem to have the syntax {DDEAUTO 123W C:\\Proyecto.....}

I don't know what the difference is. If we Copy in Lotus and Paste Special in the fields that don't work, the data then works and links and updates correctly.
However they have many different models and sometimes a field is called many times in one Word document and this solution is unfeasible since it will generate hours of Copying Paste Special-ing for every document.

Perhaps the difference is not the LINK or DDEAUTO but the fact that the data source is called 123WORKSHEET or 123W?
I couldn't find the same version of Lotus to install on his new XP box (the old one runs5.2), and could only find Lotus SmartSuite 97, which is a couple of versions newer.

Is there someway of making the data source 123Worksheet have two names? Like a kind of ODBC redirect? Or 'subst' for databases.....?
Or perhaps its the LINK or DDEAUTO issue?

If anyone can help on this topic I'd hugely grateful. He's running two machines in tandem at the moment until we can figure this out which isn't a long term solution....

Here's a screenshot showing the linked data as fields. http://www.willshand.com/screen.png

Google doesn't throw up much info about DDEAUTO or LINK...
Many thanks!
Diz

 

This post caught my eye as I'm one of the dwindling band of Lotus 1-2-3 users and also use Word 2007. I've managed to get my head around exactly what it is you are trying to do but haven't had any success getting the links to actually work. It seems that Word 2007 can only link to Lotus 1-2-3 98 edition workbooks and possibly earlier. When I attempt to link to a .123 file created in my Millennium Edition I get the attached message. However a second, possibly more significant problem is that while LINK still exists as a field name in Word 2007 DDEAUTO seems to have disappeared, so that's never going to work, not with any edition of Lotus.

There may be a temporary workaround for this but it would seem that the spreadsheets may have to be recreated in Excel or perhaps recreated in Access.

 

Thanks for the reply.
I am desperately looking for a copy of 1-2-3 5.01 for Windows in any language.
Any chance you have a copy lying around you could ftp to me?
I need it for a client's machine I am trying to VM into submission.
Many thanks!
Will

 

Only have 9.5 Will, sorry.

 

Will, if you use a later version of 1-2-3 it should be able to open files created by earlier versions, and it can also save files in earlier version formats. My 9.5 can save in these formats. Might this be a workaround?

 

Hi.
It's not a question of opening or closing files.
They have a hugely complicated 1-2-3 file that is linked to from their Word 2000 documents. It pulls various pieces of technical information from the 123 file and fills in merge fields in the Word doc. Change the 123 file and the Word doc updates.

But any newer versions of 123 don't work. There seem to be 2 types of link in the Word doc -
{LINK 123WORKSHEEET C:\\Proyecto......} and
{DDEAUTO 123W C:\\Proyecto.....}

I've got a VMware VM running on the new XP box I want to upgrade him to.
In the VM, I have Windows 2000 Pro, like his old. Word 2000, like his old. Lotus 97, whereas he has 5.01. And of the two links syntaxes I posted above, the first works in the VM, the second doesn't.

It's driving me nuts. The tech is so old nobody seems to be able to troubleshoot it for me. He cannot update to new software, as the changing of all the spreadsheets would be hundreds if not thousands of man hours to complete. And while it's expensive for him to get me to do it like this, it's cheaper than the alternative.

So I'm looking for the precise version of 5.01 to see if that makes all the links work.
!

 

Yeah, sorry I should have re-read your earlier description of the problem. But another thought - possibly Word 2002 or 2003 might work where 2007 does not. I have Word 2002 but it's not on any system right now so can't test it.

 

I've installed Word 2002 and 1-2-3 v9.5 in a XP Home VM to look into this. I can get Links to Lotus123.Workbook.98 to work but there is still no DDEAUTO class name available. Looks to me as if DDE needs to be available in the OS in order for applications to be able to use it but tbh I'm way out of my comfort zone with concepts such as DDE and am probably talking nonsense. I'm pretty sure though that your issue lies with Word, not with 1-2-3 but I will continue trying emulate your problem.

 

Whoa, you are really talking ancient! Lotus 1-2-3 was for DOS and Windows 3.1 and 3.11
Source: http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/lotus123v.htm#win50

I found Lotus SmartSuite 96 4.0 which includes a newer version of 1-2-3
http://www.vetusware.com/manufacturer/IBM/?author=1566&page=2


Here is the ftp site for lotus. I looked at a few things but didn't see anything dealing with v5.

Code:

ftp://ftp.lotus.com/pub/lotusweb/product/

You might be able to buy it
http://www.amazon.com/Lotus-Development-12656-123-5-0/dp/B00002S7ZU

 

The final version of Lotus Smartsuite, the Millennium Edition, v9, was for Win 98. Its spreadsheet, Lotus 1-2-3 works flawlessly in XP SP3, and also in 7 and 8.1 in XP compatibility mode. I still use it in preference to Excel as it has one feature neither Excel nor any other spreadsheet has - you can include text in formulae. So +"apples"+6+"pears"+2 gives 8. In Excel and its lookalikes this cannot be done yet it is an enormous aid to understanding what a complex spreadsheet is actually doing. IBM have finally withdrawn all support for Smartsuite as of May 2014. It was one of, if not the greatest product available for the PC in its boom years but, as sometimes happens, it was overwhelmed by an inferior product with superior marketing.

Oh, and apologies for the history lesson