Hyperlinks that Open in a Different Browser Window

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 9, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 2000, 2002, and 2003


Hudson noted that when he creates a hyperlink to a webpage within Excel, the link works fine—when he clicks the link, the browser is opened and the webpage displayed. However, when Hudson turns the worksheet into a webpage, the hyperlink doesn't work like he wants it to. When someone clicks on the link, the target webpage opens in the same browser window and Hudson would prefer that it open in a new browser window. He wonders if there is some way to tell Excel, when creating the hyperlink, to open the target in a new browser window.

There is, unfortunately, no way to do this within Excel that we've been able to discover. What has to happen is that the HTML anchor tag has to include the target attribute (which it doesn't, by default) and the target needs to be set to "_blank". Excel doesn't provide a way to get this specific with how you want hyperlinks to be handled.

The only solution is, undoubtedly, unsatisfactory—you need to edit the HTML code created by Excel so that the links include the target attribute. You can open the file in any text editor, such as Notepad, but the manual editing of the links is time-intensive and every time you regenerate the webpage within Excel you'll overwrite your previous changes to the HTML document.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (4080) applies to Microsoft Excel 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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