Part family member doesn't update via part family table?

Hi,

This is my first post on this forum.  I use NX 8.5 and TeamCenter 8.3. 

I'm having difficulty up-revising a part family member in a part family.  I'm able to update and save the appropriate fields in the part family's Excel table that details the part family members.  (This is an up-revision of the part family, to be precise.)  The problem is that the family member itself doesn't up-revise when I do this.  My understanding, based on both the CAD prompt I receive when attempting to up-revise the family member and on the Siemens help documentation I have on file, is that the family member is read only on it's own and is only modifiable (up-reviseable) via updating the Excel table that's tied to the part family.

Can anyone advise what I may be doing incorrectly?  What exactly is the nature of the link between the part family Excel file and each family member?

Thank you!