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OLE Links vs. Servers

This article reprinted with permission from All 'Bout Computers.

OLE links and OLE servers are a common cause of confusion for PowerPoint users. Both are ways to get information into your presentation that is developed elsewhere, but they cause drastically different results to your presentation.

OLE Links

You should use OLE links to link to the output of another program. If you wanted to include an existing Word file, but still wanted to be able to edit that file in Word, you would use an OLE link to get the file. To do this, you would use the Insert->Object menu option and select "From File". Then, you would be able to browse to the file on your hard drive and link to it.

There is a potential problem with linking to a file. Since PowerPoint uses absolute addresses when linking files, distribution of the presentation gets a little tricky. If you are going to share the presentation, you should be sure to place the file to be linked in the same folder as your presentation and then link to it.

OLE Servers

OLE servers should be used when you need to create a file during your presentation from another application. In this case, you are imbedding a whole copy of another application (or at least the information needed to set it up) into your presentation. If the other application is an Office application (such as Word), the overhead isn't that much. However, if the application is not an Office application, you will be adding a lot to your file size. You won't have the problems related to finding the file that you do when you link, but your presentation is much more likely to bloat and corrupt.

A real life example

This issue was brought to my attention via a presentation that was bloated and corrupted for no known reason. One of the people working on the presentation asked me to help diagnosis what was going on. When we looked at the "Properties" for the presentation, we noticed that there were entries for both types of OLE objects. In this user's case, instead of insert clip art from the Gallery, the actual Gallery had been imbedded multiple times. When the gallery objects were removed and replaced with the clip art desired, the presentation size shrunk back to expected size.

I am not suggesting never use OLE Servers. There are very logical places for them, especially if your presentation is designed to train users on a specific application. I am suggesting that you decide ahead of time whether you need the application or the file and work from there.