Don’t link up for the wrong reason

Have you opened an Excel file and a message straight away popped up (or displayed above your spreadsheet) telling you that the Excel file contained external links. And it asked if you wanted to update the links?

I get the message many times, especially from external parties. Most of the time I would click No to the question. But the answer always caused me to wonder whether the Excel file I opened contained the latest information from the external file.

If I click YES, there is a high chance that the errors will pop up all over the Excel worksheet.

You won’t want your links in your excel worksheets to break free. It is kinda scary when they are broken.

The way to avoid this is not to link to another Excel file. If you wish to refer to a worksheet in another Excel file, copy that worksheet over. Another option is to use Power Query. It pulls data from the external worksheet and puts the numbers in a new worksheet in your Excel file. Power Query is designed to pull data from external data sources such as Excel, CSV, databases, etc.

Power Query is available in Excel as well as Power BI.

Check out our courses in Excel and Power BI on Power Query.