the_excerpt and <!–more–> problem

I have been trying to display my excerpts as summaries of the full text pages and thus have started using:

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

in place of

<?php the_content(); ?>

This is all fine and working. However, now that I have the_excerpt being used, if I do not have an excerpt explicitly stated under the advanced posting options, the text from the main area will be displayed. This is fine, however, the <!–MORE–> tag will no longer work and link to my pages in the desired pages in this area now being displayed.

When using the_excerpt the MORE tag will not link for your main text if you do not have an excerpt explicitly stated.

Additionally the text area will not make links active either. (although the excerpt area will)

Any ideas for a work-around fix for this?

I want to use the_excerpt and if I choose to not add a summary, I would like for the <!-more-> tags from the_content area to work along with working links by default….

Any ideas on this if clause?