Can't Find External Links to Remove

boconnel

New Member
Joined
Jul 13, 2015
Messages
3
I wanted to add some intelligence to a coworker's spreadsheet, so I copied the workbook, normalized his data into tables, built a model, added a measure and then showed him the results. All good.
Since he had further updated the original workbook I thought I would copy my work back into his. I had a sheet with various tables. I copied the entire sheet by clicking on the upper left corner, then Ctrl-C, and pasted into a brand new sheet with the same name "Tables" in his. I rebuilt the model, and my two pivot tables. With his updated data, I did a "Refresh All" and I got an error that "We couldn't get the data from.... {the workbook I used to create the tables}. Open this workbook in Excel and try again." I did that and it worked. But I want to get rid of the old workbook and not have to keep opening it up. If I just do a "Refresh" instead of 'Refresh All" it works fine.
I checked Connections and there are it doesn't show any external connections. In the Data ribbon under "Queries and Connections" the "Edit Link" is greyed out.

Any thoughts on how to clean this up?
 

Excel Facts

Why are there 1,048,576 rows in Excel?
The Excel team increased the size of the grid in 2007. There are 2^20 rows and 2^14 columns for a total of 17 billion cells.
Run this code on the workbook containing the links.

They will be highlighted in yellow.

VBA Code:
Public Sub subHighlightLinks()
Dim Ws As Worksheet
Dim rng As Range
Dim x As Integer

    ActiveWorkbook.Save

    For Each Ws In ActiveWorkbook.Sheets
    
        For Each rng In Ws.UsedRange.Cells
        
            If rng.HasFormula Then
            
                If VBA.InStr(1, rng.Formula, "[") > 0 Then
                    
                    rng.Interior.Color = RGB(255, 255, 0)
                    
                    x = x + 1
                          
                End If
  
            End If
            
        Next rng
        
    Next Ws
    
    MsgBox x & " cells with links have been found.", vbInformation, "Linked Cells"
        
End Sub
 
Upvote 0
I got 128 cells with links, but no indication of how they are external links and/or how to remove them. The cells it found just had a formula with If statements.

I found the problem. I went to each Pivot individually and did a Refresh, not a Refresh All. A simple Pivot Table that I wasn't paying attention to was the problem. I deleted the worksheet that held that table. Created a new worksheet and re-built the pivot table there using the tables in the workbook. I then did a Refresh All and it work.
 
Upvote 0
Solution

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