How To Insert And Remove A Hyperlink In Excel (Ultimate Guide)
Written by co-founder Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist.
In most programs, a hyperlink is simple – it brings you to a web page!
Inserting it is just as simple: you highlight the text you want to link, click a button, and enter the URL.
But Excel’s hyperlinks are way more powerful than that.
Yes, they can open a browser window and bring you to a specific page.
But they can also bring you to a specific place in a file, open a new file, or go to another spreadsheet entirely.
Cool, right 🙂 ?
Keep reading!
Table of Contents
Linking to URLs (websites)
When you think of a hyperlink, you probably think of a link to a web page.
That’s the first use of Excel hyperlinks that we’ll look at.
Open up the example workbook and click on the cell that says “Link to a URL.”
Then click the Insert tab in the Ribbon and click Link.
You can also use the Excel keyboard shortcut for inserting a link, Ctrl + K.
This shortcut works in many apps, so it’s a good one to know.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoThe Insert Hyperlink dialog box will appear.
There’s a lot going on in this small box, so we’ll take it one step at a time.
For our purposes, all we need to do is select the Existing File or Web Page button on the left (it should be selected already) and add the URL (we’ll use https://spreadsheeto.com/) to the Address box at the bottom:
Click OK, and the text will change in color and become a link! Just click it to go to the Spreadsheeto main page.
Linking to an email address
Creating a link that will open in a user’s default email program is a great way to share your contact information.
And it’s super easy to add to your spreadsheet.
Just highlight a cell, hit Ctrl + K, and enter the email address and default subject line you want:
Exactly what happens next depends on the user’s default email client. The link will probably open Outlook or a browser tab with Gmail.
From there, all they have to do is fill in the body and send.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoLink to a cell in the same spreadsheet
In a very large spreadsheet, it can be helpful to have a table of contents or a quick way to get from one commonly used section to another.
To do that, hit Ctrl + K to bring up the Insert Hyperlink dialog, and select Place in This Document in the left panel:
Then select a sheet in the Or select a place in this document field, and enter the cell reference in the box above:
To link to a different spreadsheet in the same workbook, select the name of the sheet before typing in the cell reference.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoYou can also do this by clicking the Lookup & Reference button in the Formulas tab and selecting HYPERLINK. That opens a dialog that lets you click to select a specific cell to link to:
We’ll go over the details of the HYPERLINK function a bit later, so don’t worry too much about that right now.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoAlso note that you can link to a defined name.
If you’ve created a named range in your spreadsheet, you can link to that range. Just select the defined name from the list in the pane.
Link to a different workbook
Linking to a different spreadsheet is as easy as linking within one.
Press Ctrl + K to open up the links dialog, then select Existing File or Web Page on the left. Use the file explorer to find the file you want to link to:
Then hit OK.
Now, whenever you click on the link, the other file will open.
Pro tip: linking to specified cells in other files
It’s possible to link to a specific cell in another file, but you’ll need to use the HYPERLINK function, which we discuss below.
How to remove a hyperlink
Whether you’ve added a link that you now don’t want, or received a spreadsheet that has irrelevant links, there are many cases in which you might want to remove a hyperlink in Excel.
Fortunately, it’s very easy.
Right-click the hyperlink and select Remove Hyperlink.
Make sure to right-click, or else you’ll immediately follow the link.
Adding screentips
Screentips are messages that pop up when you hover over a link.
Here’s one of the default screentips:
As you can see, Excel displays the target location of the link, as well as the instructions “Click once to follow. Click and hold to select this cell.”
If you want to add your own screentip, you can do this through the links dialog. Highlight and link and hit Ctrl + K to open the window, then click ScreenTip…
Type in a message, click OK, then click OK again to save your link. Now, when you hover over your link, you’ll see your custom message.
Using the HYPERLINK function
With Excel’s variety of easy tools for inserting links, you might wonder why you’d need to use the HYPERLINK function at all.
There are two important cases. First, though, let’s look at the syntax.
The syntax of the HYPERLINK function
=HYPERLINK(link_location, [friendly_name])
The link_location, as you might expect, is where the links points to. This could be a URL, a cell reference, or another spreadsheet.
friendly_name is optional, but we recommend using it; it’s the text that will be displayed instead of the link path. It makes for easier reading.
The first case in which you might use the HYPERLINK function is for linking to specific cells in external spreadsheets. Here’s how that looks:
=HYPERLINK(“[name of the spreadsheet]cell reference”, “friendly name”)
Note that you may need to include the sheet reference as well. Let’s look at an example.
Say I want to link to a spreadsheet called “averageif-example-workbook.xlsx,” and I want the link to point to cell A10 on the sheet called “Units.” Here’s how I’d do that:
=HYPERLINK(“[E:\Documents\Spreadsheeto\Averageif\averageif-example-workbook.xlsx]Units!A10”, “AVERAGEIF Units”)
In this case, I included the full path to the other file, but if that file is in the same folder as the one you’re linking from, you can use a relative path.
Kasper Langmann, Co-founder of SpreadsheetoTry linking cell A13 in our example workbook to a specific cell in another spreadsheet on your computer.
Make sure the square brackets and quotation marks are in the right place!
The second case in which you might want to use the HYPERLINK function is when the link could change.
In this case, you can use a cell reference instead of writing in the URL. For example, you could use
=HYPERLINK(B2, “friendly name”)
This way, whenever the URL (or file path) in cell B2 changes, the link will automatically update.
Selecting linked cells
Clicking on a cell with a link in it will take you to wherever that link is pointing.
But what if you just want to select the cell? Or edit it?
The easiest way to do this is to click and hold on the cell. After a moment, your cursor will change from a pointer finger to a cross. If you let go of the mouse button at this point, you won’t follow the link.
If you want to edit the link, right-click on the cell and select Edit Hyperlink.
Add links in Excel like a pro
Linking to web pages and other spreadsheets from Excel documents is a very useful thing to know how to do. And when you can tweak all of the related options, you can not only make your links look nice, but provide useful information for your users, too.
It’s a skill that really comes in handy!