How to find and list all links (external references) in Excel?
In Excel, you refer to the contents of cells in another workbook by creating an external reference. But when you want to list all links of a workbook in Excel, it seems hard to find out and list all external references (links). The following tricky way 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 VB macro
Find and list all links with Kutools for Excel
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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.
Step1: 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.
Step2: In the Find What: box, enter the left part of bracket sign "[".
Step3: Click Options, in the Within drop down list, choose Workbook. And then click Find All button. Then it lists all external references in the Find and Replace dialog box immediately. See the following screenshot:
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 VB macro
The following VBA macro can help us list all linked source workbooks in a new worksheet of current workbook.
Step1: Hold down the ALT + F11 keys, and it opens the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
Step2: Click Insert > Module, and paste the following macro in the Module Window.
VBA: List all links in Excel.
Sub ListLinks()
'Updateby20140529
Dim wb As Workbook
Set wb = Application.ActiveWorkbook
If Not IsEmpty(wb.LinkSources(xlExcelLinks)) Then
wb.Sheets.Add
xIndex = 1
For Each link In wb.LinkSources(xlExcelLinks)
Application.ActiveSheet.Cells(xIndex, 1).Value = link
xIndex = xIndex + 1
Next link
End If
End Sub
Step3: Press the F5 key to run this macro. Then it creates a new worksheet and list all linked source workbooks' names and saving paths in it at once. See screenshot:
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.
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If you have installed Kutools for Excel, please do as this:
Step1: Active the worksheet that you want to find the links, and click Kutools > Link > Find and Break broken Links, see screenshot:
Step2: 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.
Note:
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.
If you want to know more about this feature, please click Find and Break broken Links.
Find and list all links with Kutools for Excel
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Comments
(the place where you are able to make a cell change colour based on the content of another cell)
Spent two days on this but could have wasted a lot more time.
Xml trick did not work as excel told me file did not have any xml mappings
Found link to named range in another document.
Thanks Soooooooo Much.
It has cured my severe frustration!
I have KuTools, used that Break Hyperlinks and Find break broken links tools, nothing has helped.
I used the Find function but did not resolve it.
I have a spreadsheet with over 140 tabs of data, roughly 80,000 cells.
Does this mean I need to had check every cell for cell formatting rules? Is there a Macro I can run? I have hyperlinks to temporary files that neither the Find or KuTools tools can "find" or Break. Is this an urgent request.
Conditional formatting all along... thank you!!!
Here's another way that works pretty well:
1. Save a copy of your workbook as an XML Spreadsheet;
2. Open the XML Spreadsheet in 'XML Notepad' (Microsoft) or any XML/text editor;
3. Search for part or all of the invalid link (URL). You should see which tab and which cells contain the invalid link and what type of reference it is (Data Validation, Advanced Filter, Named Range etc.)
4. Armed with this you can go back to your original XL file and change/delete those invalid references.
HTH
This is the template that must be used to estimate all projects.
V
Ch
2012-07-25T20:4 1:12Z
2014-08-20T15:5 3:34Z
15.00
0x0101002FAC285 9101EBD408B4E81 7052597CDA
baacc0fc-fbe2-4 ba9-b022-3c507d 1c4d6b
*** https://sp.vectorform.com/MVP.xlsx ***
Estimator
FTE
Sheet3
Sheet4
FullRA
Lists
Sheet1
Thanks STevo ... This hint saved me a ton of time.
1. Save your workbook (always No.1)
2. Save a COPY of the workbook as an XML based format (XML Spreadsheet 2003) - will lose features incompatible with XML (but accept it)
3. CLOSE the now open XML spreadsheet copy
4. Open the newly created XML Spreadsheet using a TEXT editor, like Notepad++ (don't use Windows Notepad.exe)
5. Run a text search in the XML-based copy for the "" or "" tags, and also the "RefersTo=" text, and voila! There is your external reference!
6. The other place to look is in the Named Ranges dialog - you will quickly see of any Named Ranges are pointing to an external file. The above method of searching an XML copy is very useful for finding Data Validation or Conditional Formatting settings which refer to an external file - these are very hard to find manually.
But i found a solution for the elimination of my external link.
Take a also a look at the NameManager (Menu - Formulas). In the column Refers to you will see the location where Names refer to.
No such link could be found and various tools- Kutools, FormulaDesk etc did find nothing.
Finally- I solved the problem by opening the xlsx file as zip+xml and deleting the folder dealing with external links (if you want more details- ask me).
There can also be links in 'named ranges' and hidden named ranged. Google it to find the solutions.
Sorry, that's not exactly true. MVPs Wyman and Walkenbach even get that wrong (perhaps many others too.)
This is one clear exception
=VLOOKUP(A1,'C:\FOO.XLS'!SomeRangeName,2,FALSE)