Supposing, you have a workbook contains lots of external links from other workbooks, if the linked workbook file is deleted, renamed or changed its folder location, the links will become invalid, so the linked data would not be updated automatically. In this case, you may need to remove these external links from your current workbook. Excel offers a feature for deleting the normal links within cells, but, if there are other types of links such as links within shapes, PivotTables or Name Ranges, these links will not be broken easily.
If you have Kutools for Excel, with its Find and Break Broken Links feature, you can quickly deal with the following options as you like:
To find all external links and break them as you need, please do as this:
1. Open the workbook where you want to find and break the links, and then click Kutools > Link > Find and Break Broken Links, see screenshot:
2. In the Find and Break Broken Links dialog box, all external links are listed into the list box:
3. Then, click Break Links to remove the external links, after breaking, the checkboxes before the records will become grey as below screenshot shown:
Note: The names reference to other workbooks located into the Name Manager and the links from the Pivot Tables will not be broken.
1. If you just want to find and break external links from cells, first, please select the worksheets where you want to break the links from the In worksheet drop down, (all the worksheets are selected by default), see screenshot:
2. Then, chose Cell from the Type drop down, now, only the links within the cells in specific sheets are displayed, see screenshot:
3. And then, click Break Links button to break these links, after breaking the links, the checkboxes before the records will become grey as below screenshot shown:
To find and break external links from shapes, please do as follows:
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
In the Find and Break Broken Links dialog box, please do the following operations:
If there are multiple range names which references to other workbooks as below screenshot shown, and some of the names are referenced into the formulas of current workbook. All the names with external links are listed into the Find and Break Broken Links dialog box as well, you can break them as you need.
1. To find and break the external links from name ranges, in the Find and Break Broken Links dialog box, please do the following operations:
Tips: Both the names reference to other workbooks (located in the name manager) and the names which are referenced to the formulas are listed into the list box.
2. Then, click the Break Links button to remove the formula links which are referenced to the cells of current workbook. See screenshots:
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Note: The names reference to other workbooks located into the Name Manager will not be broken.
In the Find and Break Broken Links dialog box, all of the external links from the Pivot Tables also can be displayed.
Note: The links from the pivot tables only can be listed, they will not be broken.
With this Find and Break Broken Links feature, you can also find and break only invalid links as you need. Go to the Find and Break Broken Links dialog box:
You can also list and break all links based on specific data source, please go to the Find and Break Broken Links dialog box, and do the following operations:
In the Find and Break Broken Links dialog box, you can find and locate the external linked cells one by one, please check the Activate the cell option at the left bottom of the dialog box, see below demo:
Notes:
1. After breaking the links, to recover the them, please apply the Undo feature (Ctrl + Z) as you need.
2. All cells referring to other workbooks within formulas will be listed into the Find and Break Broken Links dialog box as well, if you click the Break Links button, the underlying formulas will be removed. So, if you don’t want to remove these formulas, first you should uncheck them from the list box.
3. The external links in hidden sheets will not be listed into the Find and Break Broken Links dialog box.
The functionality described above is just one of 300 powerful functions of Kutools for Excel.
Designed for Excel(Office) 2021, 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007 and Office 365. Free download and use for 60 days.