To Embed, to Link, or Merely to Paste?

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Should you embed, should you link, or should you do neither? Here are a few guidelines.

Embedding's advantages are permanence and portability. Because the embedded object actually resides in the receiving program, you don't have to worry about what will happen if the source document becomes unavailable. Thus, for example, you'll want to choose embedding, not linking, if you plan to move the receiving document somewhere where it won't have access to the source document. (Of course, if changes are subsequently made to the source document, the version you embedded will no longer match the source.)

Linking has two advantages over embedding:

• The resulting compound document is smaller because it stores only a small amount of information describing the location and nature of the source object, not the object itself.
• Changes in the source data can be reflected automatically in the receiving document.

You should use linking when you want your compound document to stay current with its component sources over time.

What about plain old-fashioned static pasting? If the documents involved don't support OLE Linking and Embedding, of course, that is your only choice. For example, if you paste a paragraph from a Notepad document into your word processor, that paragraph arrives as static text because Notepad is a simple program that doesn't support OLE Linking and Embedding. Even with OLE-compatible source programs, though, a straightforward static paste might sometimes be more suitable than a fancy embedded object. You might know that a given bit of information won't need to be edited or updated in the future. Or you might find the convenience of editing an object in its source program is offset by the time required for Windows to launch that program. If that delay is vexing, don't embed. OLE Linking and Embedding is a service, not an obligation.