How to break an external link that won't break

Anonymous

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?

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Anonymous

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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69 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-12-11T14:30:36+00:00

Really helpful ! thanks a lot
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Anonymous

2014-12-09T19:16:45+00:00

Thanks, Roger, for the tip. I applied it successfully - with one refinement. I was pretty sure which worksheet contained the "zombie link" (I like that phrase!), but had no idea which section or cells.

I selected the whole worksheet.

Then I clicked the Data Validation drop-down arrow.

I clicked "Circle Invalid Data".

Then I scrolled until I saw the circles.

Turns out that it was, indeed, a list validation reference, all in the same column, in five rows of data I had copied and pasted from a different file.

I corrected the reference by the simple expedient of selecting the cell above the faulty rows, and drag/copying it to the cells with the incorrect reference. Then I had to manually select the correct option from the list.
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Anonymous

2014-11-01T21:34:57+00:00

The Zombie link for me was in the conditional formatting!

I selected the entire sheet and clicked conditional formatting. This brought up all the conditional formatting on the page and there was the links. Once I deleted the conditional formatting I was able to break the link! Success!!!!!

thanks for the assistance!
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Anonymous

2014-06-17T07:04:25+00:00

Make sure that your workbook is not protected this will prevent you deleting links under data.
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