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With an embedded object, a copy of the original object is physically stored in the compound document as is all of the information needed to manage the object. As a result, the object becomes a physical part of the document. A compound document containing embedded objects will be larger than one containing the same objects as links. However, embedding offers several advantages that may outweigh the disadvantages of the extra storage overhead. For example, compound documents with embedded objects may be transferred to another computer and be edited there. The new user of the document need not know where the original data resides since a copy of the objects' source (native) data travels with the compound document.
Embedded objects can be edited in-place; that is, all maintenance to the object can be done without ever leaving the compound document. Since each user has a copy of the object's source data, changes made to an embedded object by one user will not effect other compound documents containing an embedding of the same original object. However, if there are links to this object, changes to it will be reflected in each document containing a link.
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