How to break an external link that won't break

Anonymous
2012-01-11T18:42:31+00:00

I have studied all the Excel help available and followed the advice, but I have encountered an external link in an Excel 2010 workbook that simply will not break. No matter how many times I select "Break Link," this zombie is always there. I have tried deleting range names that came from the source file, to no avail. I "break the link" in the destination file, save, close the file, reopen it -- and the link is still there. I have tried adjusting the options every which way, no luck.

How do I absolutely, positively, completely and forever, send this link to Davy Jones's locker?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2012-12-04T08:40:04+00:00

Dear Long_John_Silver

I had a similar issue and in addition to Raju S Das' recommendation, I have also checked the data validations for various fields; this is where I found some zombie links that were not required anymore.

Maybe you can find some in your file too and remove them:

  • Select the cells where you expect the zombie data validation (I could narrow it down to one section on a specific worksheet)
  • In the Data Tools section of the Data ribbon, select Data Validation from the Data Validation dropdown
  • Check if there is any list validation with a reference to a linked file location.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Roger

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-04-21T20:39:15+00:00

    Links can exist in anything that can have a formula:

    • Range names
    • Conditional formats
    • Validations
    • Pivot-table formulas
    • Shapes
    • Objects
    • Parameters of queries and listobjects
    • Charts
      • Categories and series
      • Their labels
      • Error bars
      • Even chart and axis titles

    The best thing to do is examine the help for any Excel/VBA object that has a property called Formula, Formula1, Formula2 or FormulaLocal.  All those objects could have links.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-04-21T13:16:25+00:00

    Great information!  I had never thought of the defined names!!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-12T15:23:49+00:00

    every new version of excel makes it harder to deal with due to the fact they don't test completely and add stupid enhancements so eventually you will have to be a programmer to edit worksheets effectively so maybe that is what Microsoft wants . I just want to get the data out.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-02-01T18:00:21+00:00

    Thank you so much!

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