Phantom External Link

[henryg]

One of my spreadsheets is calling an external file (xlsm) link on opening, but that link does not exist in the "edit links" dialogue, and a search through the formulae does not show any cell referencing that external file. There are a number of other external links that function normally.

Even if I tell the speadsheet to update this 'phantom' link (it is password protected and I know what and where the file is), Excel says, perhaps not surprisingly, that it cannot update some of the links; and "continue" or "edit links".

The external file is an old and renamed version of the current spreadsheet, which is perhaps a little less worrying, but not much. Many of my files have to be saved as xlsm, so that of itself is not a big issue.

I have tried every search method I can think of or find by Googling to no avail. It would be very time consuming to recreate this spreadsheet. Even going back through backups would be a bit of a nightmare. Sorry, but I can't share the file

 

[henryg]

To cut a long story short, it was down to (unused) named ranges referring to the old version of the spreadsheet. I must have cloned the new version by doing a "save as" to the now old name, and Excel related the name ranges back to the old version. Still can't understand it really, as the two versions started out as clones.

Anyway, IMO Excel shoud linclude all external links in the "edit links" dialogue, not just for formulae. Sent feedback to Microsoft. I wasted so much time looking for this.