My boss has me creating a spreadsheet that will be used to link to multiple web pages on our intranet. There are about 100 or so cells, each linking to a separate URL. What he wants it to do is:
IF it’s the FIRST time you’re clicking on a hyperlink in the spreadsheet
THEN
1. Open a new browser instance (whether or not there’s one already open)
2. Go to the web page
BUT, if it’s NOT the first time you’re clicking on a hyperlink in the spreadsheet,
THEN
1. Open the web page in the ALREADY open browser instance.
Right now what happens is, you click on a hyperlink and it ALWAYS opens a new browser instance, meaning your toolbar gets really cluttered if you’re doing a lot of this.
I’ve done some googling and poking around on the Microsoft Office support site, but haven’t found anything that begins to answer this. As near as I can tell, they were happy to give people the capability of getting to the web from inside Excel, and stopped there.
Is it even possible to do what he wants? If it is, is it easy to do it? Does anyone have any hints? Outright answers would be appreciated.
My one bump. I find it hard to believe that someone on this board wouldn’t know the answer to this—the Teeming Millions are supposed to be the repository of the collected knowledge of mankind, right? Right?
crickets are too cold to chirp
OK, then. How about suggestions for googling? I like to think that my google-fu is above average, but we have some true masters on this board. I’ve tried “open excel hyperlink same browser”, but that hasn’t been terribly helpful.
Even an outright “no, it isn’t possible” would be useful, since I could at least take that back to the boss-man and tell him to forget the little luxury.
I don’t know nearly enough about Excel to say if it’s possible, however I was just looking through the Advanced Options in Firefox and saw the following -
I had a bit of play and all three of the options work as you’d expect.
I had a quick browse through the Advanced Options in Internet Explorer and couldn’t see anything similar.
Is it possible that this is an option set in the browser and not Excel itself? Even then none of the options in Firefox would do what you need.
To achieve what you’re describing in a purely HTML world, you’d simply open a “named” browser instance. I’d expect Excel will let you do something similar… it’s been a while since I’ve done it, but look at the specifications of the <A HREF=> tag for HTML - it’ll show you how to open a named window. (I don’t think it’s TARGET=, but it may be as simple as NAME=)
Then you just have all your cells reference the same window name.
Anything’s possible. I’m stuck with the IE at work, however (both because it’s corporate standard and because it’s the only browser that works with another program we use heavily). I haven’t been able to find anything in the options in either Excel or IE that would do what he’s asking for.
I wonder if it’s possible to do some sort of VB script to handle it? I’ve never programmed in VB (and it’s been more than a decade since the technical course I took in programming), so I can’t say. I’m perfectly happy going back to him and saying it can’t be done. I’d just like some cite to refer him to if I do.
Looking at Excel now - unfortunately, like most Microsoft Products, it doesn’t want to let you get down to the level of detail you need to pull this off, without jumping through a lot of extra hoops. I can’t find a good way to do it. Maybe you’ll have more luck now that you know what to look for - opening links in a specific target window.