Excel and hyperlinks

[jlla...@verizon.net]

I just figured out the solution to a problem I encountered after migrating to a new computer and O/S.  I was unable to open hyperlinks in Excel to folders on the new computer, whereas it works fine on the older O/S (10.13.6) and MS Excel (Mac 2008) application.

History:

At one time Microsoft did not allow space characters (" ") in file names in the path of hyperlinks in Excel files.  To get around this, one had to use "%20".  Later versions allowed both %20 and " ".  

Problem and Solution:

I have a master index file with links to my financial records on my local drive.  My older hyperlinks used the %20, but more recent ones had space characters (" ") in the path names.  After migrating I discovered that some of the hyperlinks failed and after a bit of debugging noticed the links that failed all had the %20 in lieu of a space character.  I edited the hyperlinks, replaced the %20 with a space and everything works again on the new computer.

I still have to put up with the new Microsoft "Potential Security Concern" pop-up, but at least I can get to the folder.  I wish I could flag the folder as "trusted" once and subsequently accesses would bypass the security pop-up.

I don't have a Quora or StackExchange account.  Feel free to distribute to others, but please remove my personal information.

Jim