Removing External Links

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill
  • Start date Start date
B

Bill

Hello,

I have a spreadsheet that seems to think it needs to link to another
spreadsheet, but I know better!

I looked under Edit>Links and found the file name and searched for it on all
worksheets. I could not find it in the formulas.

I checked my named ranges and none of them contain the offending file name.

I have buttons to which I have assigned macros, and none of them point to a
macro contained in the offending file.

Does anyone have other ideas where I might look to remove this external
reference?

By the way, I am running 2000, which doesn't have the ability to break
links. However, I tried changing the external source to an arbitrary
worksheet, and when it tried to load it, it asked me to specifiy which sheet
in the arbitrary spreadsheet to reference to specific sheets in my original
spreadsheet. During that process Excel mentioned two sheets in my original,
which I take as having confined my suspect area.

I checked the code for those suspect sheets and saw nothing that seemed to
be establishing an external link.

A coworker has XP, which has the ability to break external links. I tried
this and got a serious error. Excel shutdown and gave the opportunity to
recover the data before closing. I tried that and it kept the data but all
the formatting was gone. Just more evidence, that's all.

Any ideas?

Bill
 
Frank,

Thanks. It looks like it's not ready yet. There's nothing there. I'll
check back.

Bill
 
Hi Bill

I joined a new company recently and have the same problem with some old files, some with 20 links just referencing 1 cell as a check. It's a nightmare 'cause you can't update links when opening files

Some of these links don't exist anymore (I believe!). Try selecting the whole sheet and pasting in a New Book. This worked for me to remove those links you can't find. You'd have to do some formatting to the new sheet though.
 
It turns out that I had some named ranges referring to that other file. I
missed them the first time I looked because I only viewed the list of names
from one worksheet in the book. I had made the apparently incorrect
assumption that it didn't matter which worksheet was active when I checked
them. I isolated the problem by deleting one worksheet at a time and
checking for the external link to go away. Out of futility I happened to
look at the list of named ranges again and noticed the external references
in some of them.

Thanks Carl and Frank, for your replies.

Bill

Carl Nicholson said:
Hi Bill,

I joined a new company recently and have the same problem with some old
Click to expand...
files, some with 20 links just referencing 1 cell as a check. It's a
nightmare 'cause you can't update links when opening files!
Some of these links don't exist anymore (I believe!). Try selecting the
Click to expand...
whole sheet and pasting in a New Book. This worked for me to remove those
links you can't find. You'd have to do some formatting to the new sheet
though.
 
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