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

2014-05-30T20:25:41+00:00

A general solution

Select your whole data set on that sheet

Open Data Ribbon

Click Data Validation

Excel will generate this message "This selection contains some cells without Data Vlaidation Setting. Do you want to extend Data Validation to these cells?"

Click No

Click OK

Saves time on looking for that needle in someone elses spreadsheet.

Gary
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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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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

2014-12-09T19:16:45+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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