How to find and list all links (external references) in Excel?

In Excel, you reference the contents of cells in another workbook by creating an external reference. But when you want to list all the links of a workbook in Excel, it seems hard to find and list all the external references (links). The tricky way in this article will help you find out and list all links in workbook quickly.

Find and list all links with Find command

Find and list all links with Kutools for Excel

Find and list all links with VB macro

Find and list all links with Find command

Because external links contains bracket [ sign, we can find out the external links if we can get all bracket signs in the whole workbook.

1. Click Home > Find & Select > Find to open the Find and Replace dialog box. You can also open the Find and Replace dialog box with pressing Ctrl + F keys.

2. In the Find What: box, enter the left part of bracket sign "[".

3. Click Options, in the Within drop down list, choose Sheet or Workbook that you want to find the links from.  See screenshot:

4. And then click Find All button. Then it lists all external references in the Find and Replace dialog box immediately. Press Ctrl + A  to select all link cells as following screeshot shown:

The left part of bracket sign can find out the external links in the whole workbook. If you want to find out all kinds of links, including the internal links and external links, you can enter the exclamation sign "!" in the Find what: box.

Find and list all links with Kutools for Excel

With Kutools for Excel’s Find and Break broken Links, you can find all the external links of the active worksheet, at the same time, you can break the specific links as you need.

If you have installed Kutools for Excel, please do as this:

1. Active the worksheet that you want to find the links, and click Kutools > Link > Find and Break Broken Links, see screenshot:

2. In the Find and Break broken Links dialog box, click Filter drop down list to choose All links, and all links in the active worksheet are listed, you can view the links status as well, OK stands for the link is valid, Error means the link is broken.

Notes:

1. If the View cell option is checked, when you click on the link in the list. It will find and navigate to the specific cell which contains the link in the worksheet.

2. And if you want to break a link, you can select the link from the list, then click Break link.

Click to Download Kutools for Excel and free trial Now!

If you want to know more about this feature, please click Find and Break broken Links.

Find and list all links with VB macro

The following VBA macro can help us list all linked source workbooks in a new worksheet of current workbook.

1. Hold down the ALT + F11 keys, and it opens the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. Click Insert > Module, and paste the following macro in the Module Window.

VBA: List all links in Excel.

Sub ListLinks()
    Dim xSheet As Worksheet
    Dim xRg As Range
    Dim xCell As Range
    Dim xCount As Long
    Dim xLinkArr() As String
    On Error Resume Next
    For Each xSheet In Worksheets
        Set xRg = xSheet.UsedRange.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeFormulas)
        If xRg Is Nothing Then GoTo LblNext
        For Each xCell In xRg
            If InStr(1, xCell.Formula, "[") > 0 Then
                xCount = xCount + 1
                ReDim Preserve xLinkArr(1 To 2, 1 To xCount)
                xLinkArr(1, xCount) = xCell.Address(, , , True)
                xLinkArr(2, xCount) = "'" & xCell.Formula
           End If
        Next
LblNext:
    Next
    If xCount > 0 Then
        Sheets.Add(Sheets(1)).Name = "Link Sheet"
        Range("A1").Resize(, 2).Value = Array("Location", "Reference")
        Range("A2").Resize(UBound(xLinkArr, 2), UBound(xLinkArr, 1)).Value = Application.Transpose(xLinkArr)
        Columns("A:B").AutoFit
    Else
        MsgBox "No links were found within the active workbook.", vbInformation, "KuTools for Excel"
    End If
End Sub

3. Press the F5 key to run this macro. Then it creates a new worksheet named as Link Sheet and list all links location and linked source workbooks' names and saving paths in it at once. See screenshot:

Find and list all links with Kutools for Excel