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Forum Discussion
Hyperlink not working in Excel
I am new to file sharing on Dropbox and am looking to use Dropbox to house an excel spreadsheet which has hyperlinks to pdf's. I emailed the spreadsheet as an attachment to my colleague direct from ...
Hey there StefC - how are you today?
Let me shed some light into this so you can have a clear view of why it's happening and you can decide if you'd like to share a folder with those PDFs with your colleague after all. Read on for more context:
In Microsoft Excel, you can create links in a workbook to another workbook or file on your computer using a formula that references an external location. When this link is created, it points to a location on your own hard drive.
When your workbook is downloaded onto another's computer, the locations that your formula points to are no longer there. The link in the workbook is looking for a specific place, for example /Your_Computer/Your_User/File, and that location is no longer accessible from a different computer.
To learn more about relative and external paths in Excel please consult the following Microsoft support page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/328440/description-of-link-management-and-storage-in-excel
While we are unable to support you in configuring Microsoft Excel to work the way you would like, we suggest perhaps using wildcards in your formulas. Wildcards, such as "%HOMEPATH%”, if other users have the Dropbox folder located in the default location, would let you point to a location without having to worry about different usernames in the path.
I hope this information helps and please let me know if there's anything else I can do from my end to assist with this.
Walter
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHey there StefC - how are you today?
Let me shed some light into this so you can have a clear view of why it's happening and you can decide if you'd like to share a folder with those PDFs with your colleague after all. Read on for more context:
In Microsoft Excel, you can create links in a workbook to another workbook or file on your computer using a formula that references an external location. When this link is created, it points to a location on your own hard drive.
When your workbook is downloaded onto another's computer, the locations that your formula points to are no longer there. The link in the workbook is looking for a specific place, for example /Your_Computer/Your_User/File, and that location is no longer accessible from a different computer.
To learn more about relative and external paths in Excel please consult the following Microsoft support page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/328440/description-of-link-management-and-storage-in-excel
While we are unable to support you in configuring Microsoft Excel to work the way you would like, we suggest perhaps using wildcards in your formulas. Wildcards, such as "%HOMEPATH%”, if other users have the Dropbox folder located in the default location, would let you point to a location without having to worry about different usernames in the path.
I hope this information helps and please let me know if there's anything else I can do from my end to assist with this.
What a quick reply! Thank you so much, @Walter, that's exactly what I needed to know! That makes perfect sense.
So, let me ask you something else - If I were to figure out this wildcard workaround, hyperlinks would still need to be pulled from a shared folder and the end user would need to have dropbox located in the same place as I do on my computer, correct? So, in essence, they are following the same path to get to the Dropbox file? Would this wildcard workaround be valid if the end user wanted to access the excel file from dropbox online or from a different computer than his usual?
- Walter
I don't think so StefC - wildcards such as this one can be used for accessing those Excel spreadsheets' hyperlinks to your PDF files only on Windows computers also running our desktop app, having the Dropbox Folder in the same location as you, in order to point to the exact same filepath.
Moreover, all users will have to have those PDF files stored within the same (shared) folder - it's the only way to keep the same filepath and not break the hyperlinks.
This means that if you're having your Dropbox folder located to your C drive, the other parties will also have to have their Dropbox folders located there as well.
Hey, Walter! Does this syntax "%HOMEPATH%” work in Mac OS or only in Windows? It seems like a DOS syntax, will it work on my airbook as well? If so, how? When I do find and replace with this wildcard, Excel cannot find the path. The only thing that works is when, right after opening the spreadsheet on another comuter without updating the links, I replace the actual syntax without wildcards, in my case from /Users/Adam's Mac/ to /Users/AM/ and back again when I go back to my airbook from the desktop.
- Walter
I don't think it will to be honest Borq; probably due to how the Mac OS was designed to begin with as Windows' OS has a different path separator and handles UNC differently from Mac's OS.
Moreover, as I won't be able to assist further with this since it falls outside the scope of my expertise at this point, I'd suggest searching the web for a work-around as you might be able to find something useful.
I wish I could help more than this.
Hi
This is exactly my problem however I have a query, at what point in the hyperlink do you suggest placing the wildcard This is an example of a path to a file I want users to access from an Excel spreadsheet - obviously this is my path D:\Dropbox (Busselton Jetty Swim)\2020 Event\2020 Event Management\Compliance Documents\City of Busselton.
thanks
Hi, the earlier query may have been answered however I lodged a further query on this same issue. Please advise on where exactly the wildcard should be placed in the hyperlink to link to a document on another user's system. thanks
- Walter
Sorry for the late reply SecretaryBJS; how are you today?
Even though this fall outside the scope of my expertise (perhaps you'd be better off asking in a Microsoft forum), I'll try to help as much as I can with this.
In your example, the wildcard (%HOMEPATH%), will need to replace the 'D:\Dropbox (Busselton Jetty Swim)' portion but note that for this to work, all the members accessing those spreadsheets will need to have their Dropbox Folder on the same location as you (their D drive in this case) in order for those links to not break and be functional as normal.
Note that I'd still suggest you also asked Microsoft directly about how you should go with the task at hand as this is out of our remit.
I hope this helps to a certain extent and feel free to give this a try but note that YMMV.
