microsoft excel clickable link to other spreadsheet

How to Find and Fix Microsoft Excel Clickable Links to Other Spreadsheets

When working with multiple spreadsheets, it's essential to ensure that all clickable links are functioning correctly. In this article, we'll discuss how to find and fix broken links in Microsoft Excel.

To start, open your workbook and go to the 'Find' function by pressing Ctrl + F or navigating to 'Home' > 'Editing' > 'Find & Select' > 'Find...'. This will open the 'Find and Replace' dialog box. In the 'Find what' box, type either '*external:*' or '*xl*' (without the quotes) depending on whether you want to find all external links or only references to a specific file.

Once you've entered your search term, click on the 'Options' button in the 'Find and Replace' dialog box. This will allow you to specify additional options for your search. For example, you can choose to match whole words only or use regular expressions.

After finding all external links, you'll need to identify which ones are broken. To do this, sort your list by the 'Status' column to show the links with an error status first. You can do this by clicking on the header of the 'Status' column.

To fix a broken link, select the source that reports an error and click the 'Change Source' button. This will open a new window where you can navigate to the correct workbook and select it. Once you've selected the correct workbook, click OK or double-click the workbook to confirm your changes.

Repeat this process for each problematic source individually until all broken links are fixed. You may notice that your list of links becomes shorter after fixing the errors, as some links may have referred to the same file but with incorrect names.

In addition to using the 'Find and Replace' function, you can also use the 'Edit Links' feature in Excel to quickly get a list of all external sources in a workbook. However, this feature does not show which cells contain those external references.

By following these steps, you'll be able to find and fix broken links to other spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel, ensuring that your workbooks are accurate and reliable.

Microsoft excel clickable link to other spreadsheet