How to Use Excel’s HYPERLINK Function (Examples)

Creating hyperlinks to another webpage in Excel is straightforward. Copy the link to that webpage and paste it into a cell, Excel will make it a hyperlink.

However, some URLs might be very long and convoluted so you might not want them to appear on your sheet but, under an anchor text 📝

You can do so by using the HYPERLINK function of Excel. It not only allows you to embed hyperlinks to webpages in Excel but, also to any file on your PC and multiple other locations.

This guide will teach you how to use the HYPERLINK function of Excel to create hyperlinks to URLs, files, workbooks, and other locations within your workbook and more.

As you continue reading to learn all this, grab your free practice workbook for this guide.

Table of Contents

Understanding the HYPERLINK Function and its Syntax

A hyperlink is a link (you can say reference) that navigates you to a designated location when clicked. You’d see hyperlinks everywhere on the internet (often formatted in a different color than the remaining text).

For example, I am embedding a hyperlink to Spreadsheeto. Click on it and you’ll be navigated to the Spreadsheeto Homepage 🌐

The HYPERLINK function of Excel is a function from the Reference and Lookup functions library of Excel.

It allows you to create a hyperlink that will take users to a specified location when clicked. It makes linking and referencing in Excel so much easier.

Syntax

The syntax of the HYPERLINK function is all about two arguments, the link, and the anchor text.

• Link_location (required argument): The link you want to be embedded as a hyperlink.
• Friendly_name (optional argument): The name by which you want the link to appear on the face of your sheet. Since it is optional, if you omit it, Excel shows the link_location as the name.

Let’s now jump into the pool of examples of using the HYPERLINK function in Microsoft Excel.

How to create clickable Hyperlinks in Excel using the HYPERLINK function

A hyperlink normally navigates you to a webpage (something on the internet) but that’s not all. In Excel, you can create hyperlinks to webpages, emails, documents, folders, and files and even to other locations of your Excel workbook.

As the users click on the link, Excel navigates them to the linked webpage/document/location.

I know you’re curious but hold that – we will now see a variety of examples to create hyperlinks in Excel.

Ready? Let’s go.

Hyperlink to a webpage

How about we begin by creating a hyperlink to Spreadsheeto in Excel? 🎯

Step 1) Begin writing the HYPERLINK function as below.

Step 2) As the link_location argument, refer to the cell that contains the link.

Step 3) As the friendly_name argument, refer to the cell containing the text string that you want to set as the anchor text for the hyperlink.

Step 4) Hit Enter to see how a hyperlink appears in Excel.

Excel creates a hyperlink to the Spreadsheeto Homepage and names it as Spreadsheeto. Clicking on a hyperlink will navigate users to the embedded webpage link.

I have simplified the process by adding the link location and friendly name in cells and then referring them in the HYPERLINK formula.

However, if you don’t want to do that, you can hardcode them both into the HYPERLINK function as below.

Hyperlink to an Email address

Do you know you can also send emails by embedding email addresses in Excel?

No? Let me show you 📩

Here I have the email address of Spreadsheeto in Excel (feel free to reach out to us on it if you have any questions or feedback).

Step 1) Begin writing the HYPERLINK function as below.

Step 2) As the link_location argument, refer to the cell that contains the email address.

Step 3) As the friendly_name argument, refer to the cell that contains the anchor text you want to set for the hyperlink.

Step 4) Hit Enter.

As users click on this link, they will be navigated to compose a new email addressed to this email address.

The same can be done through hardcoding the email in the HYPERLINK function too:

Pro Tip!

If you want to group multiple recipients under the same Hyperlink, you can add multiple emails to the link_location separating them by a comma as below.

= HYPERLINK (“mailto: hello@spreadsheeto.com, abc@spreadsheeto.com”, “Emails”)

You can add multiple emails with a comma in between, and clicking on the hyperlink will take you to write an email to all the embedded emails.

Have each email in separate cells? Concatenate them using an ampersand operator (&) like here.

= HYPERLINK (“mailto:” & B2 & “,” C2, “Emails”)

Hyperlink to another worksheet of the same workbook

You can also create hyperlinks in Excel to navigate to another sheet of your workbook 📑

To create a hyperlink to another sheet of your workbook, write the path to that sheet as below:

Makes it:

To create a hyperlink to Sheet1 of your workbook:

Step 1) Write the HYPERLINK function as follows:

However, if the sheet name includes space characters or non-alphabetic characters like “Manual Calculation – V2”, you’d hardcode it as:

Step 2) To create a hyperlink for it, embed this into the HYPERLINK function as:

Hyperlink to a Cell from the same Sheet

Sometimes all you want is to create a hyperlink for a particular cell or range of cells in Excel. To your good, Excel allows hyperlinking to other cells 😎

Here’s how.

Step 1) To create a hyperlink to a cell (say Cell F8), write the HYPERLINK function as this:

Step 2) Hitting enter will create a hyperlink to Cell F8.

When you click on this hyperlink, Excel will navigate you to Cell F8 of the sheet.

Hyperlink to another workbook

Hyperlinking another workbook in Excel requires simply typing in the entire path that indicates the location of a workbook.

For example, I have Book1 located in the My Books folder on my Drive C.

To create a hyperlink to this workbook, we need to write the path to this workbook in Excel as follows;

Step 1) Write it for the above path in the HYPERLINK function as follows:

This makes the link location.

Step 2) Write any name as a friendly name.

Step 3) Press Enter and Excel creates a hyperlink for the workbook stored at the given location by the given name.

Clicking on this hyperlink will launch this workbook.

To take this a step ahead, if you want this hyperlink to navigate users to a specific cell of a specific sheet from another workbook, write the path as:

To refer users to Cell A1 from Sheet 1 of Book1 placed in the “My Books” folder on my Drive C, I will rewrite the above HYPERLINK function into the following formula.

Clicking on this hyperlink function will launch Book1 and navigate users to Sheet 1 > Cell A1 within it 🚀

Hyperlink to a Word Document on your Drive / Bookmark

Not only workbooks, but you can also add a hyperlink to any Word document stored on your PC in Excel 📚

I have a Word Document named “Document 1” placed in the folder “My Books” on my Drive C.

We will create a hyperlink to this document by writing the path to it as follows:

Step 1) Write the HYPERLINK function to link the said document as:

Step 2) Input the friendly name you want for this document.

Step 3) Press Enter.

Additionally, if your [start-highlight]Word document has any bookmarks applied[end-highlight], you can also include them in the hyperlink by writing its path per the below format.

Let’s say Document 1 above has a bookmark by the name “Chapter1”.

Step 4) Include the bookmark reference in the link_location as below.

In this case, as this hyperlink is clicked, the embedded Word document will launch and within that document, the user will be navigated to that bookmark 🔖

Hyperlink to any file on your drive

Just like another workbook and a Word Document, you can create a hyperlink for any file that sits on your PC.

For example, I have a PDF File named “File 1” placed in the folder “My Books” on my Drive C.

Let’s create a hyperlink to this file. The technique to write the location path for it remains the same.

Step 1) Write the HYPERLINK function to link the above PDF file as:

Step 2) Then add a friendly name for it.

Step 3) Press Enter.

Excel creates a hyperlink to the pdf file on your Drive C.

This way, you can create a hyperlink for any file on your drive in Excel.

Not only files but by amending the above path location, you can create a hyperlink to any specific location on your PC. 💻

Say if you only want to create a hyperlink to the folder My Books, just rewrite the path above like this:

Cool, isn’t it?

Conclusion

Hyperlinks are a great reference tool to navigate users to the location of a specified item. Knowing that you can add links to different locations and items within and outside your current workbook saves you the need to insert them in your book as it is.

This saves space, makes your Excel file easy to use, and most importantly helps you keep things updated. The above tutorial explains all the possible hyperlinking you’d want to do in Excel. But there’s so much more about hyperlinks in Excel that you have yet to learn.

Hop on to the following links to read my other Excel tutorials on hyperlinks in Excel.

• How to Hyperlink in Excel: Add, Edit, and Remove (Full Guide)
• How to Find External Links in Excel (2024 Guide)