Stubborn External Link not going away

[raviarao68]

Hi All,
Now the title is famously popular all over the web - I know ! - I am faced with something unique in an ancient problem !
The story goes like this...
I created 4 excel workbooks A,B,C,D as a part of major restructuring of my 'ERP' like model, in a folder in D drive
'A' being one of the workbooks, which all the other files would definitely be linking back to, I wished to maintain it entirely link free, which I did. All 65MB of this 'mother' file was kept without any external links.B,C and D were allowed to link to A but that does not show up as a link in A.
Then I created another folder on D drive and moved all these 4 files into it, since more work on my project would start cluttering the running folder.
I updated and changed source for all the files.
For some unknown reason, A file in the new folder, shows a link to C in the earlier folder ! Break Links - Nothing Happens. Update Values with new location C - OK. Check Status - Again Error message returns. Change Source - Nothing Happens.
Tried all possible searches - Inspected Document - the usual culprits, Conditional Formats, Data Validation, Charts, Objects,Names, etc.etc. all acquitted honorably ! There are no objects,pivot tables,etc. Inspect Document cam up saying the hidden names are there and external hidden links are there but it cannot remove them.
Even inserted module and copy pasted a web solution macro to Unhide HIDDEN NAMES - it came up with a lot of names BUT NONE with any links to C file ! There simply is no link anywhere - it was'nt there in the first place, but I am still looking !

The only thing I can recall is that I had copied one single row A1:DZ1 ( formatted with different cell color fills ) which is basically a mirroring row with the Row 50 of every sheet ( A1 contains formula'=A50', B1 contains formula '=B50', and so on... ) from the C file into all the other files by selecting all the tabs and pasting them in bulk. But there is no real link to the C file anywhere.
I do not want to progress without removing this external link from the A and B files.
WHERE IS THIS NON-EXISTENT LINK COMING FROM ?

HELP ! This one is definitely a NEW one - I am pretty **** sure....or am I ??

 

[RoryA]

Do you have any tables that might have had formulas that referred to the other workbook?

 

[raviarao68]

Do you have any tables that might have had formulas that referred to the other workbook?

None whatsoever !
C file was born after A and B.
And in the original folder, there were no links to any file showing - since there were'nt any.

 

[RoryA]

Then I think something must have changed in the copy from the original.

 

[raviarao68]

I did a Cut and Paste from original location to the new...

 

[RoryA]

Then I guess something got changed after that. Pretty hard to troubleshoot something like this from afar...

 

[raviarao68]

Hi Rory !
Bill Manville's Findlink Add In to the rescue ! It did the job ! Links that were completely invisible to all other methods were brought out in a flash. Mine were in some empty cells with data validation which had become #REF .
Tips after using FindLink Add In:
Excel has to be closed and reopened to actually see that the edit links removes it from it's window.
Keyboard might stop functioning in Excel due to the add in, if so disabling it after using it and restarting Excel should solve it.
I am in Excel 2016 for the record.
Thanks for your support and Thanks to Bill Manville too !