1.3 Overview

The Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) Data Structures enable applications to create documents that contain linked or embedded objects. The file format of an embedded object is different from that of a linked object because the embedded object is required to contain its native data as well as data about its creating application. The linked object, however, is required only to contain a reference to its data. Both embedded and linked objects are required to contain presentation data.

The following sections describe the logical layout of the file formats of embedded and linked objects.