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Recently when I open my XLSM files (Excel 2013, Macro enabled workbooks) I see this popup.

Excel Pop Up

Can anyone please tell me what is the cause for this pop up?

I am not referring to any URLs using VBA in my workbook.

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  • it means that your spreadsheet is linked to another spreadsheet somewhere that cannot be determined to be safe. linking worksheets allows you to share data across workbooks. updating a link involves getting the latest data from the linked spreadsheet and importing it into the workbook. more info here: keynotesupport.com/excel-basics/excel-linking-worksheets.shtml Oct 14, 2014 at 6:30
  • @FrankThomas Thanks. Is there a way I can figure out where in my worksheet I have a link to external spreadsheet? The problem is my spreadsheet contains a lot of formulas and VBA code. Kind of tough to look through the entire excel manually.
    – Ayusman
    Oct 14, 2014 at 7:16
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    see this document: office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/… Oct 14, 2014 at 7:18
  • Note that its definition of unsafe probably relates to automatic zone definitions (defined in the IE settings). urls within your organization should be members of the localnetwork zone, but if you used a server shortname instead of an FQDN for instance, it may be confusing the zone. or it may simply distrust any link pointing off your system, perhaps to a file share in your organizations network. sorry, I don't know exactly how it determines safety. Oct 14, 2014 at 7:22
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    @FrankThomas this helped thanks. Can you just post an answer, I will mark it as accepted answer please.
    – Ayusman
    Oct 14, 2014 at 7:40

1 Answer 1

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When a pair of spreadsheets are "Linked", it means that data from one is used in another. These links however are not dynamic, so if the data you linked to changes, the data in your spreadsheet will not change, until the link has been "updated". See here for how to link Excel documents.

See this document for instructions on how to determine the target of a link. the process varies depending on whether the link is to Cell data, used in Formulas, Charts, or other objects, so be sure to check all of them if you have no idea what links might be present.

Once you have decided whether you trust the link target(s), you can decide whether to click the "Update" button and pull in the latest data, click "Don't update" to leave the data as is, or whether to go in and remove the links if you no longer need them.

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