A work colleague has taken one of my spreadsheets, and somehow linked it to an external source (even though they reckon they haven’t)

Excel says

Unable to open https://service.projectplacedocs.com/user/user/dropbox/Transformation and PMO/****/etc etc /whole.xlsx. Cannot download the information you requested.

I have tried links, and there is nothing. I have tried find and variations of [ or some of the file path above and nothing !

Could it be hidden in VBA coding?

Ta?

I usually find something like that hidden in a vba module that has got itself attached to the file. Alt f11 and throw out and modules you don’t need or recognise

Ta tried that and no success.

Might now be a case of deleting a sheet at a time to find the culprit

formulas tab / show formulas / search for ‘https’ ?

I have tried links

Is that the same as data connections?

if you aren’t sure it is https then just search ‘[‘ which will show all external links and you can find it among them

edit: search the same as you would in Word: ctrl+F to open the search dialog box

Found the bloody thing !

It was a named range with an external link.

Odly though it managed to transfer that same named range to another unrelated spreadsheet. So it then too came up with the same link.

Bit concerned it is some form of virus, but our IT do not appear too concerned….

I had a similar problem & the CTRL+F “[” didn’t work.

Turned out it was data validation for a drop-down list, where the data had been linked to another spreadsheet when copying from one sheet to another.

*edit: too late!