How to Find Excel 2010 external Link

Learn how to to find links to external files in Excel document

In this video tutorial we will show you how to find excel external link.

All links to external files in the Excel document contain square brackets. So if you want to find a reference an external file in the Excel document you need look for the square brackets.

Open the Excel document. Press the "Find&Select" button in the "Home" tab. Select the "Find" option in the drop-down menu.

In the pop-up window, type the square bracket symbol in the "Find what" box, then press "Options" button.

In the appeared options choose to look "Within" the "Workbook".

Press "Find All" button.
All the external links in the document have been successfully found.

[ashishzarekar]

Today it is 20/Oct/2023 -> And This method still works.

[tomanyc]

A good starting point to a more robust search. It worked for me. Thank you!

[jayabhai]

Thank you for your video - it was helpful to me 🌹

[bobbyreyes]

This helped in my case. Thank you kindly!

[BlackAvengers]

The assumption that Square Brackets are only associated with external Links is incorrect. They are also associated with Formula's that reference tables.

[coodie]

This also doesn't help finding external links in conditional formatting.

[leticiahoskins]

Did NOT work for me. Someone help! I get this message every time I open my workbook. I do this but then it says "Microsoft Excel cannot find the data you're searching for" I searched the whole workbook (not just the sheet). I do not want to just turn off the pop up. I want to FIX it! I use this workbook for bills so I duplicate it year after year and then just delete the previous years $$ amounts.

Edit: I figured it out. I had a "Data Validation" (List) for some of the names of my Bills reading from an INDEX List, but there were a couple that were trying to read from the INDEX list from the another (BILLS) workbook.

I have MS Excel 2010

How I fixed this issue: Opened workbook, "X"'ed out of pop up, Select a cell that has a "Data Validation" (List), went to "Data" tab, Data Tools, Data Validation, Data Validation, Click in the Source box, select the cells from the INDEX you want the list to reference, then make sure to check the "Apply these changes to all other cells with the same settings", look at the highlighted cells to make sure they are all being updated, if not all of them are updating make a mental note or write down which cells (these are the cells that are trying to read from a different workbook), press ok, then go to the cell that wasn't updated and repeat this process.

[ZeroFresh]

Do NOT use this method if you write formulas in R1C1 reference style. It will literally return every cell that contains a formula with a relative reference.