You receive error messages when you try to create a hyperlink to another Excel workbook in Excel 2003 (867820)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Office Excel 2003

SYMPTOMS

The following symptoms occur when you try to create a hyperlink to another Microsoft Excel workbook in Microsoft Office Excel 2003:
  • If you click Bookmark in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box when you create the hyperlink, the bookmark is not added, and you receive the following error message:
    Microsoft Excel could not open this file or could not parse a file of this type.
  • After you create the hyperlink, you receive the following error message when you click the hyperlink:
    Cannot open the specified file.

CAUSE

This issue may occur when the file name of the Excel workbook to that you are trying to create the hyperlink to or the bookmark contains both of the following characters:
  • The opening brace ({) character.
  • The closing brace (}) character.
For example, this issue occurs when the file name of the Excel workbook that you are trying to create the hyperlink to is {Test}.xls.

WORKAROUND

To work around this issue, type the full path and the file name of the Excel workbook that contains the brace characters in the Address text box of the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

MORE INFORMATION

Generally, both folder and file names should be composed of alphanumeric characters. Many of the non-alphanumeric characters may cause problems when Excel 2003 tries to parse a path and a file name. Some non-alphanumeric characters, such as exclamation points (!), are used by Excel as part of the path within a hyperlink. For example, a hyperlink from one file to another file that is in a cell might look similar to the following hyperlink:

C:\My Documents\Excelfolder\[BOOK1.XLS]SHEET1!$A$1

In this example, Excel 2003 cannot locate a file that has an exclamation point as part of the file name, the sheet name, or the path name.

If you receive one of the error messages that are mentioned in the "Symptoms" section, you may want to view the URL path name together with the file name, and remove any non-alphanumeric characters from the URL path name. Then, test to see if you can correctly create the hyperlink. Additionally, you may want to consider the length of the path name and the file name because the length of a path string in a hyperlink may also affect its functionality.

For more information about the limitations for path and file names in Office 2003 programs, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

325573 You receive error messages when you try to open an Office document

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:6/7/2005
Keywords:kberrmsg kbtshoot kbprb KB867820 kbAudEndUser
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