Hyperlinks

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Hyperlinks' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Activating a Hyperlink
There are a few ways to activate a hyperlink in Excel listed here.

Adding a ScreenTip
When you visit a Web site in your browser and you roll your mouse over a hyperlink, you may see a small pop-up tip concerning the link under the mouse. In Excel this is called a ScreenTip, and it is easy to add them to the hyperlinks in your workbook.

Changing Portions of Many Hyperlinks
If you need to modify the URL used in a large number of hyperlinks, you can do so by using a macro and a little ingenuity. This tip shows how easy it is to get the changes you need.

Converting a Range of URLs to Hyperlinks
Converting a single URL into a hyperlink is easy. Converting hundreds or thousands can be much harder if you have to rely on manual methods. Here is a handy macro that can do the necessary conversion for you.

Converting to Hyperlinks in a Shared Workbook
When you enter a URL or e-mail address in a worksheet, Excel usually converts it to a clickable hyperlink. This doesn't occur, however, if the workbook is shared; the URL or address remains regular text. This tip discusses ways you can get around this behavior so that you have clickable hyperlinks in shared workbooks.

Copying a Hyperlink to Lots of Worksheets
Copying information from one place to another in a worksheet is easy. Copying hyperlinks may not seem that easy, but you can use the same editing techniques you use with regular information.

Deleting a Hyperlink
Once a hyperlink has been placed in a workbook, it can be perplexing to figure out how to remove it. The process is easy, once you learn it, but can vary based on the version of Excel you are using.

Drop-Down List of Hyperlinks
Creating a drop-down list with Excel's data validation feature can be a nice touch for a worksheet. What if you want the drop-down list to include active hyperlinks? While Excel doesn't allow you to create this, there are a couple of workarounds you can use.

Dynamic Hyperlinks in Excel
Hyperlinks to many types of Web sites rely on passing parameters in the URL. Knowing this, you can construct a dynamic hyperlink by pulling information from various cells in your worksheet.

Editing a Hyperlink
Excel will cheerfully keep track of all sorts of hyperlinks for you. If you want to change the hyperlink in some way, don't do it by clicking. Instead, use one of the techniques spotlighted in this tip.

Extracting URLs from Hyperlinked Images
When copying information from the Internet to an Excel workbook, you may want to get rid of graphics but keep any hyperlinks associated with those graphics. This can be easily done by using the macro highlighted in this tip.

Getting Rid of All Hyperlinks
Need to get rid of all the hyperlinks in a worksheet? It's easy when you use this single-line macro.

Getting Rid of Many Hyperlinks
Got a bunch of hyperlinks you need to get rid of? Here's a handy (and simple) macro that can do the task for you.

Hyperlinks in Shared Workbooks
Inserting a hyperlink into a workbook that is shared with others is not possible in Excel. Here's what you can do about it.

Hyperlinks to Charts
You can create hyperlinks to all sorts of worksheets in a workbook, but you cannot create a hyperlink to a chart sheet. This tip provides a workaround that should display just what you want hyperlinked in the first place.

Inserting Hyperlinks
One type of data that Excel can store within a cell is a hyperlink to another resource either on your local computer or on the Web. This tip walks you through the steps you follow to insert just the type of hyperlink you need.

Jumping to Text in Worksheet from an Index
In putting together a workbook, you may develop a worksheet that acts as an index, to contain links that lead to other areas of the workbook. If you want to know how to use those links to jump directly to a particular cell on a worksheet, you'll need the techniques described in this tip.

Links to Hyperlinks
If you create a link to a hyperlink, where both the link and the hyperlink are in different workbooks, you may wonder how to make the link behave just like the hyperlink it references. This can be done, but only if very specific criteria are met.

Opening an HTML Page in Excel
Excel allows you to open HTML pages within the program, which is great for some purposes. What if you want to open a browser window, however, from within Excel in order to display an HTML page? This tip highlights two methods you can use, within a macro, to perform the task.

Pasting a Hyperlink
When you copy information from one workbook to another, you may want to link that information as a hyperlink. You can quickly achieve this goal by using the steps presented in this tip.

Putting More than One Hyperlink in a Cell
Excel allows you to put a single hyperlink in a cell. If you have a need to put multiple hyperlinks in a cell, then you need to enlist the capabilities of programs other than Excel.

Removing Hyperlinks without a Macro
If you have a whole slew of hyperlinks in a worksheet and you want to get rid of them, it's easier than you think. This approach uses the Paste Special capabilities of Excel to get rid of the unwanted links.

Removing Hyperlinks without a Macro, Take Two
Need to get rid of hyperlinks in a worksheet? Here's an easy way to do it without using a macro.

ScreenTip for an Image
You can configure images in Excel so that if someone clicks on them, a macro is executed. You cannot, however, have a macro and a traditional ScreenTip tied to the same object. This tip explains how you can get around this limitation using two separate techniques.

Showing Visited Hyperlinks
Many people like to use Excel to keep track of lists of hyperlinks. Want to keep a permanent record of which hyperlinks from the list you've visited? Excel won't do it for you; you need to get a bit creative, as described here.

Special Characters In Hyperlinks
Do you use special characters (such as the pound sign) in your worksheet names? If so, you could run into problems creating hyperlinks that target those files. Here's how to get around this potential problem.

Turning Off Hyperlink Activation
Does it bother you when you enter a URL and it becomes "active" as soon as you press Enter? Here's how you can turn off this activation so that your URLs remain as regular text.

Tying a Hyperlink to a Specific Cell
Make a hyperlink to a cell in your workbook, edit the structure of that workbook a bit, and you may find that the hyperlink no longer targets the original cell you intended. Here's how to make sure that the link always stays associated with the desired cell, regardless of the editing you do.

Unwanted Hyperlinks
Enter a URL or an e-mail address into a cell, and Excel helpfully converts it into a hyperlink that you can click to activate. If you don't want this to occur, there are several approaches you can take, as described in this tip.

Using Drag-and-Drop to Create a Hyperlink
If you open workbooks in two instances of Excel, you can use drag-and-drop techniques to create hyperlinks from one workbook to another. This is a quick and easy way to link your data together.