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
    2016-04-05T08:47:38+00:00

    clearing off phantom/zombie data validations resolved this for me, when I saved and re-opened file the links had been removed.

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  2. 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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  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-01T18:00:21+00:00

    Thank you so much!

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-01-13T13:56:35+00:00

    This was the ONLY solution that worked for me!  Once I changed the source to the file I was actually working in I had to save the file then close it.  When I reopened it the edit links option was finally greyed out!  Thank you SOOOOO Much!  This was driving me batty.

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