How to troubleshoot "Automatic update of links has been disabled"

When I open some spreadsheets I get the error "Security Warning Automatic update of links has been disabled". I can only imagine this might be in reference to formulas or other content in the workbook which link to other workbooks. However, most of the time, the sheets I'm opening when I get this message should not have any such links.

How can I find out what is triggering this error, and eliminate that condition?

8 Answers

Go to Data -> Edit Links (in the Connections group). It will show the linked sources. Unfortunately, Excel has no native way of finding what is linking to the sources (official documentation states: "There is no automatic way to find external references (also called links) that are used in a destination workbook."). It might be a reference in a Cell, which is not hard to find, or in a Chart, which might be (I am actually having trouble in one such case).

I use a very useful add-in, FINDLINK, to find the locations of external links. It worked most of the times, but it is not working in one specific case.

Other options are:

1. . It gives 3 options: Use the Find command, Use a VBA macro, Use Kutools for Excel.

2. . There is overlap with the previous item.

3. Delete Links Wizard, from Microsoft (it is stated that it APPLIES TO Microsoft Excel 2000 Standard Edition, Microsoft Excel 97 Standard Edition).

I do not know whether Microsoft Office 2010 has the feature to break links, but you can break links with MS Office 2013:

Go to Data -> Connections -> Edit Links -> Break Link

This turns the value into a local value instead of a value from an external source.  The warning is gone once you save and re-open the file.

One way to find that would be to click on formulas then click on show formulas check to see nothing is pointing to a different sheet. If there is nothing there then click on formulas then click on name manager and see if there is any formulas referring to a different sheet. Once you fix those save and close and open the sheet and should be all good to go.

Maybe it's an old add-in. To check, if it is, follow these steps:

1. Open the Excel-options
2. Click on Add-ins
3. Change "Manage" to COM Add-ins
4. Click Go
5. Check if there are old Add-ins and remove them.

Now the warning should be gone.

I had the same issue, In my case the excel file had email addresses which automatically turned into links. I selected all of them, right clicked and chose remove links, but I still received the link warning on opening the file.

The only way I worked around the issue was to select all the data in the worksheet (I only had 1 worksheet) then paste it into a new Excel file.

On Excel 2007, for a specific file you will share with others:

Data tab > Connections > Edit Links > Startup Prompt

Select : Don't display the alert and don't update automatic links

I saw this error when I opened a workbook that did have links to another workbook. I only see it when the workbook to which it is linked is not open. If I open the workbook with the source of the links, then open the one that was giving the error, the error msg did not popup.

This is old ,but...

I eventually realized that I was getting the error due to the macros I had added to the Excel's Quick Access Toolbar. I had copied the spreadsheet from a previous financial year and Excel wanted to read the macros from the old file. To fix it, I removed all the macros from the Quick Access Toolbar.