PowerPoint 2007 won't update links to files on network drives

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Problem

You link data from Excel or other files on a network drive to your PowerPoint 2007 presentation. The links work as expected but when you save the presentation and reopen it the links stop working. When you try to update the link, you see this error message:

The linked file was unavailable and can't be updated

Solution

As a workaround, you can move the linked files to your local hard drive and re-link to them there.

This hotfix from MS promises to solve the problem:
Description of the PowerPoint 2007 hotfix package: February 19, 2008

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