When you embed another Excel file into an Excel 2007 or 2010 workbook, choosing only to show the icon for the file, you may find that after saving the Excel workbook that the icon text, picture or both text and picture is missing. In some cases the picture remains while the text is gone and in other cases only a blank white space is left, though it still works to open the embedded Office document when clicked. Here is what you would see:
In this case, the text is missing and the icon is blank.
This has been confirmed to happen when a third party program called Digital Guardian by Verdasys is installed on the system. The problem is known to happen with version 5.3.2 on the client and 5.3.1 on a server. Apparently this is a known issue that can be corrected by upgrading to version 6.1. Check with Verdasys if you are having trouble locating the update.
I am having this exact problem, but do not have Digital Guardian installed.