Hyperlinks and Network Shares
The other day I wanted to insert a hyperlink to another spreadsheet.
I hardly ever put Hyperlinks into Spreadsheets - I almost always link to a web page.
This time, however, I wanted to link to a document on the file server.
Insert - Hyperlink - Double click the file - done!
“Wow! that was easy” I thought, then promptly attached and e-mailed the spreadsheet to the customer.
“Great spreadsheet” was the feedback, “but the hyperlink is broken - it’s pointing to my C: drive!”
It appears as though hyperlinks are stored by relative path (rather than absolute path) when the linked document is on the same Network Share.
His e-mail program had saved the attached spreadsheet to C:\Temp before opening it, so the hyperlink also looked to the C: drive.
When I hover my mouse pointer over a hyperlink, the tool tip reveals the true path.
Here is me hovering over the hyperlink from my computer:
Here is my customer hovering over the hyperlink from their computer:
Fixed it - Here is my customer hovering over the fixed hyperlink from their computer:
What’s the difference between the first and last hyperlink?
The last hyperlink is actually a formula which forces an absolute path:
=HYPERLINK(”Z:\SpecialFile.xls”)
one drawback to this is the customer needs to have the network drive assigned to the same drive letter.
I would use the hyperlink formula too but instead of the Z: I will rewrite \\MyFile…
I’ve seen posts in the newsgroups that say if you set the hyperlink base (file|properties|summary tab) to something like C:\ (it should always exist???), that the links aren’t changed.
But I like the worksheet formula version better. I’ve never had any trouble with that.
How can you change the hyperlink from an absolute to a relative? My hyperlinks seem to be getting corrupted I have rewritten them, but sooner or latter they change from relative to absolute and stop working.
Thank you! This information was exactly what I needed!
The above is great if you have hyperlinks just in cells. I have the problem with hyperlinks being ‘corrupted’ when used with i.e. a shape in excel 2007.
Can anyone help with that? Thanks!!!
I’m frustrated. I’m using Excel 2007 and I’m inserting a hyperlink that will direct the user to go to another worksheet in the spreadsheet, but when I e-mail it to someone or try to access it from another computer the hyperlink does not work. The hyperlink is pointing to my local drive with my user id. I only want the hyperlink to point the worksheet, so I can e-mail the spreadsheet out and the hyperlink to work on any computer. Right now, I can only use the spreadsheet on my local drive.
It appears that the hyperlink automatically creates the hyperlink to the c: drive. How do you change the hyperlink to only point to the worksheet with no reference to a temp file on the local drive?
Ray, did you ever get a fix for this issue? I have the same problem….
Thanks,
Brian