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Linked excel sheets not updating

I have a question that has been puzzling my team as we use Excel as our main system in our business, with many separate files that have cells linked together.

We have a shared file on dropbox that allows us to all access and update these excel files.

Our issue is that if my teammates or I update one excel file, the other files that are linked to it will not update accordingly unless our administrator goes in and manually opens each file. Only when this happens, the updates flow through to the files according to the updates my teammates and I have made.

This causes some issues because at times we are not able to continue our work until the administrator opens the files to allow the updates to flow through into them. This also creates issues because only the administrator is able to create links between separate excel files.

We are looking for a solution that could enable all team members to preform these tasks, without having to bother the administrator to open the files so the liked cells information can flow through.

One side point I would like to mention is that the administrator typically will use excel on the desktop, while many team members are using "excel for the web".

On the top of my excel for the web page, it has a yellow message that reads, "Links Disabled, Links to external workbooks are not supported and have been disabled". - I have a feeling this has something to do with it.

Our team members currently have a mix of Apple and Windows computers.

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Accepted answers

Mark

Hi @Dhwestfield

You almost certainly need to be using the desktop versions of Excel on your machines for this to work. However what I would say is that the other issue you MAY run in to is that if in Excel the links are not configured as relative (if thats possible) they wont work and update unless every single user has exactly the same folder structure set up. This is because if not Excel wont know where to find the files as they wont be where its expecting them.

All comments

Mark

Hi @Dhwestfield

Dhwestfield

Thank you! This is helping us get closer to our goal, very helpful. Now this leads me to the relative links issue.. Any insight on how to ensure that works? I used the desktop version and I was able to have the information flow through to a linked excel spreadsheet, but when I opened the file it prompted me to update the file, and then im assuming that because our folders are not all set up the same my computer had me locate the file in my documents in order to pull the information. It would be great if we could find a way to have the links be "relative", so that it could smoothly update the files.

One side observation I have noticed is when I select a linked cell, in the function bar it shows the employees name who made the link, and only that employee can smoothly update the files. I am wondering if creating the "relative" links will cause the names to go away therefor allowing everyone to freely update the files and flow the information from other files through.

Example of one of the function bars is:='C:/Users/**EMPLOYEE NAME**/Dropbox/SeptemberShared/Portfolio/[September Porfolio.xlsx]Holdings!$F$22

Thank you for any insight you may have on this, it is very appreciated

Zatt

Hi,

I have encountered the same issue and was unable to find an acceptable solution neither from office nor from dropbox...

Since the problem is with the Users/**employee name** problem, just move your dropbox folder directly to C:\ and you won't have the issue anymore.

Sorry for the screen capture in french but you can find the option in the sync tab of your account preferences.

And all employees should do that and ensure that new employees directly install dropbox in C:\ instead of their username folder.

2.13.0.0

DwightG

Will this still work when the new update comes along?

On the Mac side apparently;

"Your Dropbox folder will be moved to ~/Library/CloudStorage."

Which is in the Users folder, and to add insult to injury;

"Changing the location of your Dropbox folder is no longer supported by macOS."

Pretty terrible for working on shared files.