Excel hyperlinks can be attached to a range of cells — What would be a plausible use of this feature?

Question

Background: I'm the author/maintainer of xlrd, a Python package for reading Excel 97-2003 XLS files. I'm in the process of enhancing to extract information about hyperlinks. My reason for asking this question is to optimise the memory/CPU tradeoffs for the common case, while functioning in the same way as Excel

In Excel 2003 and 2007 (and presumably 2010), it is possible to attach a hyperlink to a single cell; this is well known.

Excel 2003 and 2007 also allow you select a range for insertion, e.g A1:C3. In that case, clicking on any cell in the range will jump to the target of the hyperlink. I can't find any web reference to using a range.

My question is: Does anybody use the range facility? What for?

A possible use case: The first worksheet is a menu for the remainder of the workbook. Each worksheet or topic has a hyperlink on the menu sheet. Each hyperlink occupies a 3x3 range of cells to make it easier for users in a hurry to click on the correct link.

Answer 1

I think it'd be useful to create your own custom buttons out of cells, so that clicking anywhere on the button, which would cover the range, would take you to the intended destination.