Excel Links to Other workbooks

Hi Chris,

Thank you for posting your question in our forum. My name is Ron and I am one of STL's trainers.

I can feel your concern. Firstly about links in Excel. When working with a link, one of the files is going to be the source file (your master workbook). The other workbook(s) is the destination file. Links only work from the source file to the destination file. In other words, in the destination file you will have a formula that links to the source file. If you therefore change the source file's information, you would be affecting those destination files and that is what you would like to prevent while working on the master file.
All you have to do to play around with the master file is to copy it and save it in a different location on your machine or network. Because the formulas in the destination files still point to the original file they won't be affected by any changes you make to the copy.
Once the master file is updated with your changes you will need to re-direct the links in the destination file(s), but in principle if no major design changes were done in the copy of the master you can replace the original master file with the modified copyin the same folder and give it the same name as the original file. The links should be picked up automatically by the destination files.

Always work on copies before using it on live data!!!!!!

To answer your last question: Links are based on cells, linked cells have a formula that pulls in the data from the source cell. You could for instance have a value in cell A1 that also appears in cell A1 on sheet 2. You would see a link formula on sheet 2 in Cell A1 that would read: =Sheet1!A1

I hope this makes it clear to you that if you want to work on the master, make a copy and safely change anything without affecting the linked workbooks.

If this is not the answer you wanted or need more clarification please reply to this forum message

Kind regards

Ron Oldeboom
Learning and Development consultant
STL-training