How do I stop Excel from checking the validity of hyperlinks before it opens them?

Question

If you open an Excel spreadsheet containing external hyperlinks, when you click the link, Excel will check that the link is valid (i.e. doesn't return a 404 error) before actually opening it in the browser.

This is utterly maddening for me and I cannot for the life of me figure out why the developers could have ever fathomed that this would be a remotely good idea.

The side-effect is that hyperlinks take a longer time to open, and/or cannot be opened at all if Excel's connection to your network is blocked (e.g. by a firewall).

I have tried disabling all the options in the "Trust Center" that relate to links but nothing has helped.

How can I turn off link checking in Excel forever?

Answer 1

A registry setting can change this behavior and force Excel to simply launch URL's in the default browser. There could be security implications, so be sure to read the following article carefully and decide if it's the right thing for you to do.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/218153#FixItForMeAlways

I ran the "Fix it for me" application after several unsuccessful attempts to manually make the registry edits.

Now my hyperlinks launch in the default browser, without the pre-check, regardless if it's clicked by the user, or programmatically launched in VBA.

Answer 2

In excel 2003, the ForceShellExecute=1 regedit solution does not work. My workaround is calling the links directly from the shell using a macro. The below macro is right now creating 2 types of links from the current row depending on which column I click. This can of course be changed to check if there is a link in the cell you're selecting. Also selecting with right mouse button works in case there is an active link in the cell.

Option Explicit

Private Declare Function ShellExecute _
  Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA" ( _
  ByVal hWnd As Long, _
  ByVal Operation As String, _
  ByVal Filename As String, _
  Optional ByVal Parameters As String, _
  Optional ByVal Directory As String, _
  Optional ByVal WindowStyle As Long = vbMinimizedFocus _
  ) As Long

Public Sub OpenUrl(link As String)
    Dim lSuccess As Long
    lSuccess = ShellExecute(0, "Open", link)
End Sub

Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
    Dim c As Range: Set c = Selection
    If c.Count <> 1 Then Exit Sub
        
    Dim y As Integer: Let y = c.Row
    If y < 11 Then Exit Sub
    
    Dim name As String: Let name = Cells(y, 3).Value
    If name = "" Then Exit Sub
    
    Dim x As Integer: Let x = c.Column
    Dim link As String: Let link = ""
    If x = 10 Then Let link = "prefix of link type 1"
    If x = 11 Then Let link = "prefix of link type 2"
    If link = "" Then Exit Sub
    
    link = link & name
    OpenUrl link
End Sub

Answer 3

For more people struggling: I made a small solution for this, it has also a hosted variant.

Answer 4

Excel finds out what the link points to / returns - another excel file, a word document, a web page etc and then opens that in the respective application or itself. This is desired functionality.