How to remove broken links to word docs that are no longer needed?

Nick Syrett

Tagged: graphics delete missing links word import unlink links panel

This topic has 13 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 4 years, 4 months ago by Natasha Dierwechter.

Viewing 11 reply threads

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- April 9, 2017 at 6:43 pm #93620
  
  Nick Syrett
  Member
  
  I imported a few word documents into my Indesign file using Place. I did not know that I was somehow maintaining a link to the original word file. I don’t want this. I just wanted the imported text. I have edited this text in ID. After I imported the word files I deleted them.
  
  Now whenever I open my ID file it tells me I have six broken links and these are to these old word files. I want to remove these broken links from the links panel but I don’t know how to do that. Help!
- April 10, 2017 at 3:20 pm #93626
  
  Dwayne Harris
  Member
  
  I confess I’ve never had links to Word documents. And I take it the broken links show up in your links palette (like artwork)?
  
  If so, you should just be able to click each one (or all of them by holding the shift key), right click and select “unlink.”
  
  That’s what I do when I get a file full of incopy documents (ICML) that we don’t need or aren’t being used.
- April 10, 2017 at 3:47 pm #93627
  
  Nick Syrett
  Member
  
  Thanks for your reply. However, there is no UNLINK option in my links panel. That is the problem!!! And yes, there are (broken) links in this panel to word and excel documents that I have imported using PLACE. Also in this panel are are the links to all my images. I am using MacOS 10.12.4 with Indesign version 2017.1
  
  Any further help would be greatly appreciated!
  - April 11, 2017 at 4:47 am #93631
    
    Dwayne Harris
    Member
    
    Hopefully someone else will chime in, Nick. I have no idea why you don’t have that option.
    
    I admit I don’t have CC2017 available at the moment.
    
    But I was able to unlink in previous versions of Indesign.
- April 11, 2017 at 8:07 am #93634
  
  David Blatner
  Keymaster
  
  The “Unlink” feature lives in the Links panel menu (in the upper-right corner of the panel). It is right after “Go to Link.” I see it just fine in CC 2017.
  
  (If you don’t see it, perhaps you need to rebuild your preferences. Search our site for details.)
- April 11, 2017 at 8:12 am #93636
  
  Nick Syrett
  Member
  
  Thank you David. ‘Unlink’ works fine for linked files. But for broken files (like my docx. etc) ‘unlink’ is greyed out. Therefore, I cannot remove these broken links. HELP!
- April 11, 2017 at 8:36 am #93639
  
  David Blatner
  Keymaster
  
  Nick: That is just really weird. It works fine for me, even with a broken document. Is it possible that you are using some third-party tool such as WordsFlow from Em Software? (They have their own word-linking system that, I think, replaces InDesign’s.)
- April 20, 2017 at 6:26 pm #93804
  
  Nick Syrett
  Member
  
  Nope! I have given up trying to remove the broken links.
  
  On new docs I’m making sure the link pref is turned off so I don’t have this issue.
  
  If you have any other ideas of how to unlink these pesky broken links please let me know! I wish I could upload an ID file as an example but I’m not sure how to upload here…
- April 21, 2018 at 10:51 pm #103258
  
  H Peterson
  Member
  
  I was able to work around the greyed-out Unlink option, as follows:
  
  1. Copy and paste the INDD-based text into a spare frame.
  2. Link the problematic frame that was linked to a since-deleted Word file to a spare .txt file instead (I used an Instructions.txt file.)
  3. In Links, right-click on the .txt file item and click the now-available Unlink option.
  4. Delete any text in the story and paste the actual text from the spare frame back in.
  
  This is obviously a cumbersome fix. I have limited experience with placing text linked to a Word file, so I don’t know if the Unlink option being greyed out is common. What brought me to this thread via web search was a packaged document that included a now-unnecessary Word file that I deleted from the Links folder before opening the INDD file to poke around. In the future, I’ll just try to unlink before deleting.
  - February 18, 2019 at 2:18 pm #114449
    
    Nathalie Samson
    Participant
    
    I LOVE YOU!
    
    Perfect solution, thank you so much.
- October 9, 2018 at 12:11 pm #110821
  
  Tami Settergren
  Member
  
  I ran into this problem with graphics that I no longer needed in a document. They kept showing up as missing links, with no way to delete them in the Links panel. Apparently, I had Track Changes on, and the deleted graphics were being kept in my tracked changes in the Story Editor. I opened the Track Changes panel (Window > Editorial > Track Changes) then the Story Editor (Edit > Edit In Story Editor). Then in the Track Changes panel, I was able to Accept All Changes > In This Document. This removed all the missing links from the Links panel.
- May 19, 2019 at 3:14 pm #116602
  
  Clark Kenyon
  Participant
  
  I wonder if the links to Word files isn’t something left over from using Wordsflow. I’m seeing the same thing (links to two Word versions of the book) in an ID doc I’m revising at the moment. It was created back when I was trying out Wordsflow.
- October 11, 2019 at 11:31 pm #14323935
  
  Natasha Dierwechter
  Member
  
  Mine was a .csv file that I’d used a way back for Data Merge. Found it there and was able to delete the link from that panel.
- December 12, 2019 at 10:50 pm #14323458
  
  Aaron Linsdau
  Member
  
  I created a video with 5 different methods for fixing broken links. I actually found 3+ methods that actually work when the original document isn’t available. The other 2 methods may work if you have the Windows version of Indesign:
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