Hyperlinks in Excel - can I do this?

Hi folks,

I hope there is an answer to this question - it is driving me mad.

I'm editing an Excel spreadsheet (Excel 2016) about properties I'm looking to buy.

The spreadsheet has fields for type, bedrooms, address, etc and a cell for a hyperlink to the property listing.

What is driving me mad is that if I click on a cell containing a hyperlink, Excel automatically opens that hyperlink in my browser. When formatting cells, this happens time and again and is really annoying me.

Is there any way to change the behaviour so that if I want to follow the hyperlink I press another key (such as CTRL) whilst clicking on the cell and if I don't want to follow the link, nothing happens when I click that cell?

Thanks in anticipation,

Art

RickC said:

If you Ctrl+Shift+Click a hyperlink it won't follow the link.

Not quite what you wanted but I know of no setting to change the default behaviour.

Hope this helps...

Thanks Rick. I was rather hoping I could set, say CTRL-Click as a default action.

CTRL-Shift-Click needs me to remember as does moving to the cell via the cursor keys (which doesn't follow the hyperlink). As it stands, I forget to do this and get taken away fom the Excel document and to the property listing on the web.

You probably can do it, it is just a question of figuring out how !

Cheers,

Art

RickC said:

You can prevent entered URLs from automatically being formatted as hyperlinks but won't that defeat the purpose?

Yes, exactly. I can turn the hyperlink into text simple enough, but as you say this defeats the object of it being a hyperlink!

If there isn't a way of doing it (and I'm sure there must be) because selecting the cell by moving from one cell to another with the cursor keys doesn't follow the hyperlink, whereas clicking on the cell takes you to the hyperlink's webpage.

Art

ArthurDent said:

What is driving me mad is that if I click on a cell containing a hyperlink, Excel automatically opens that hyperlink in my browser. When formatting cells, this happens time and again and is really annoying me.

Art,

Select the cell next to the one with the hyperlink then use an arrow key to change your selection to the desired cell.

The MS guidance is in Excel Help in the page Select a hyperlink without activating the link so search for that in your built-in Help or online - Work with links in Excel.

[It's Word that has the option to change to using Ctrl-click to run hyperlinks, not Excel.]

Denis

Thanks Denis.

Looks like it isn't possible then to have CTRL-Click as the default action to follow a hyperlink.

It is a shame that Microsoft don't listen to users - I think this would be an improvement (well, in my humble opionion anyway).

Take care,

Art

UPDATE: Apparently this works:

Click the cell that contains the hyperlink, hold the mouse button until the pointer becomes a cross Excel selection pointer, and then release the mouse button.

Just tried it on my spreadsheet and it does what it says above. I just have to remember to "long click" the cells!

Art

Art,

Yes. That's in Excel Help. But I find selecting the next door cell first then moving the cursor to be a bit quicker & less prone to finger trouble.

All the best,
Denis