if you want each cell in the new sheet to be linked to each cell in the original, why not just insert a formula in cell A1 to link to cell A1 in the original sheet, make sure that the cell references in the formula are not absolute references (i.e., remove the dollar signs), then copy this cell and paste it to the other 499 cells in your sheet. the cell references linking to the other sheet will be updated for each respective cell. also, you could next this link formula inside an if statement, so that if the cell in the original sheet was blank, the linked formula will return a blank, like this:
if([book1.xls]sheet1!A1="","",[book1.xls]sheet1!A1)
HTH
kevin