Applies ToExcel for Microsoft 365 Excel 2024 Excel 2021 Excel 2019 Excel 2016

The Document Inspector found one or more links to data in other workbooks (external links) in your workbook. The names of the worksheets that contain the data you linked to are saved with your workbook but they aren't visible there.

Issue

The Document Inspector can't remove these external links for you.

Recommended solution

  1. Close the Document Inspector.

  2. Select the external links you want to remove and press Delete, or break the links if you want to remove the link but keep the calculated values.

  3. Run the Document Inspector again to verify the issue is resolved.

More about external links

The Document Inspector detects external links that appear in the Edit Links dialog box (in Excel, click Data > Edit Links).

Edit Links on the Data tab

External links include external references that are used in:

  • Worksheet cells

  • Names

  • Objects, such as text boxes or shapes

  • Chart titles

  • Chart data series

See Also

Find external references (links) in a workbook

Fix broken links

Break a link to an external reference in Excel

Control when external references (links) are updated

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