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Hyperlinks and Network Shares

12th February 2006, 11:32 pm by Rob van Gelder

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”)

Category: Worksheet Functions, Hyperlinks  |  Comment (RSS)  |  Trackback

4 Comments

  1. Adrien:

    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…

    13 February 2006, 12:41 pm

  2. Dave Peterson:

    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.

    14 February 2006, 7:59 pm

  3. JerryDeSanto:

    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.

    25 April 2006, 2:15 pm

  4. Julia Bertschinger:

    Thank you! This information was exactly what I needed!

    23 May 2007, 7:51 am

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