OFF2000: Memory Problems When Hyperlinking Between Programs

When you use hyperlinks to switch multiple times between your Web browser and Microsoft Office programs, your system slows down and begins to run low on available memory. If you press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to display the Close Programs dialog box in Microsoft Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows 98, the Office programs appear in the list. If you are using Microsoft Windows NT, the Office programs appear in the list of Processes in the Windows NT Task Manager.

This occurs for two reasons:

• Programs are not necessarily released from memory when you switch away from them by clicking a hyperlink.
  
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• Clicking a hyperlink may result in loading a new instance (or process) of the program to which you are linking.

For example, if you click a series of hyperlinks that take you from Microsoft Internet Explorer to Microsoft Excel, then to Microsoft Word, then to Microsoft PowerPoint, and then back to Internet Explorer, you may find that all of the programs are still loaded into memory and in some cases, more than one instance of a program is in memory.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

All of the programs in Office include the ability to create hyperlinks. Hyperlinks allow you to "jump" to Internet or intranet Web pages, or to documents in other Office programs.

It is possible to create a series of hyperlinks between programs. For example, an HTML document in Internet Explorer can include a link to a Excel workbook. That workbook can contain a hyperlink to a Word document. That document can contain a hyperlink to a PowerPoint presentation, and so on.

When you click a series of hyperlinks, all of the programs in the series may load into memory. When you click a hyperlink to switch away from a program, you do not remove that program from memory. Because of the way in which Internet Explorer loads programs, you may not see a button for the program on the taskbar.