MS-Excel / Excel 2003

Following Links in a Worksheet

After you follow a hypertext link to its destination, the color of its text changes from the traditional blue to a dark shade of purple (without affecting its underlining). This color change indicates that the hyperlink has been followed. (Note, however, that graphic hyperlinks don't show any change in color after you follow them.) Followed hypertext links regain their original blue color when you reopen their workbooks in Excel.

To help navigate the links in your workbook, you can display the Web toolbar and use its buttons. To open the Web toolbar, choose View → Toolbars → Web. The Web toolbar and identifies each of its unnamed buttons.

The Address combo box on the Web toolbar not only shows you the address of the current workbook but also stores all the addresses of the various documents that you've opened and Web pages that you've visited. You can then reopen a document or revisit a Web page simply by clicking its path or URL on the Address drop-down list.

When you follow a link that opens a Web page or another Office document, you can use the Back and Forward buttons to go back and forth between the Excel workbook with your hyperlinks and the destination document or Web page. For example, suppose that you create a hypertext link in a cell of your spreadsheet that opens your favorite financial page on the World Wide Web. When you click the hyperlink text, Excel launches Internet Explorer, connects you to the Internet, and takes you directly to that page.

After browsing the information on the financial Web page, you may need to return to your Excel spreadsheet to check some data. Without closing the Internet Explorer window, click the Back button on the Internet Explorer's toolbar to return to the worksheet. From there, you can go right back to your financial Web page by clicking the Forward button on the Web toolbar.

You can continue going back and forth between the Web page and the Excel spreadsheet as long as you like just by using the Back and Forward buttons on their respective toolbars. This way is perfect to go to and fro when you're copying and pasting information from the Web page into your worksheet.

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