Links cause PowerPoint to freeze when opening

We are trying to move from 2000 to 2007, but there is a massive issue that is
preventing us from using 2007. All of our reports are created by linking to
excel. This used to work seamlessly in 2000.

But now, if you try to open a report in PowerPoint that is linked to excel,
you are put through a cycle where powerpoint tries to update every link.
Another way to describe this is that PowerPoint and Excel become frozen when
PowerPoint is opened and there seems to be no way to bypass the cycle. The
time it is frozen increases with every link that is in the report, basically
making powerpoint 2007 unusable for any of our reports (which basically means
powerpoint 2007 is useless to us).

From my googling, it seems this is a known issue, but I've yet to google a
solution. Does anybody have any ideas or answers?

Thanks
Jeremy