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Friday, February 12, 2016

Phantom Links in Excel Workbooks


Ever open up a worksheet and have an "Update Links" dialog box pop up and, even after searching, you can't find the link?

I have one worksheet that this kept happening in. Even trying to break the link wouldn't work.  Tom Urtis has provided a number of different methods to fix the problem and you can click here to see his solutions. He has a great tutorial on it.

If the first couple of his solutions don't work you and don't want to get into macros and you know it is a phantom link (so it won't impact your spreadsheet) then try my solution.

Click the Update Links icon in the dialog box  and Excel will display an  an Edit Links dialog box and it shows the data source. I tried breaking the link and I still got the Update Links message so I persevered.
Under the Edit Links dialog box is a Start Up Prompt icon.
Click on it and you can tell Excel to stop displaying the Update Links message when opening the file and to NOT update the links automatically.
It's not a perfect solution but at least you get rid of that annoying dialog box.

Ms. Excel- Resident Excel Geek