How to overcome the limit of hyperlinks in Excel? - excel

Question

I have a list of links in more than 100000 cells.
I have to give hyperlinks to all of them but in Excel there is a limit of 65530 hyperlinks per worksheet.
How can I overcome the limit or how can I merge cells with equal values using VBA?
Sub AddHyperlinks()
Dim myRange As Range
Set myRange = Range("A1")
Dim hText As Variant
Do Until IsEmpty(myRange)
hText = Application.VLookup(myRange.Value, Worksheets("Sheet2").Range("A:B"), 2, False)
If IsError(hText) Then
hText = ""
Else
ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=myRange, Address:="http://" + hText, TextToDisplay:=myRange.Text
hText = ""
End If
Set myRange = myRange.Offset(1, 0)
Loop
End Sub

Answer 1

The solution is as mentioned by #Rory:
Use the HYPERLINK function in your cell to emulate a hyperlink via a formula.
=HYPERLINK(url, displaytext)
This effectively bypasses the built-in Excel limit on "hard-coded" hyperlinks. Just tested this out after I hit the infamous error 1004:
Application-defined or object-defined error
when trying to create 100k+ hyperlinks in a sheet.

Answer 2

Just regular copy paste should work, but I can update the example (not tested) if it doesn't
Sub AddHyperlinks()
Dim rng As Range, rngFrom As Range, values, r
Set rng = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1").Range("A1")
Set rngFrom = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet2").Range("A:A")
rng.Worksheet.Hyperlinks.Delete ' remove all previous Hyperlinks
While rng(1) > ""
' resize the range to the same values
While rng(rng.Rows.Count + 1) = rng(1)
Set rng = rng.Resize(rng.Rows.Count + 1)
Wend
r = Application.Match(rng(1), rngFrom, 0)
If Not IsError(r) Then
values = rng.Value2 ' save the values
rngFrom(r, 2).Copy rng ' copy from the cell next to the match
rng.Value2 = values ' restore the values (not sure if it removes the links)
End If
Set rng = rng(rng.Rows.Count + 1) ' move to the next cell below
Wend
End Sub

Answer 3

If you store the URL in (eg) colA then something like this should work:
Private Sub Worksheet_BeforeRightClick(ByVal Target As Range, Cancel As Boolean)
Dim URL
If Target.Column <> 1 Then Exit Sub '<< only reacting if cell in URL column is right-clicked
URL = Target.Value
ThisWorkbook.FollowHyperlink URL
End Sub
Alternatively use the Before_DoubleClick event
It does mean you can't use a "friendly" link text such as "click here", but you could likely manage that if you store the URL text at a fixed offset and then read that instead of Target.Value

Answer 4

I suffered from the same problem and I know that I shouldn't have more than around 120000 rows that need hyperlinking so modified some code I found in another thread to this
Sub hyperlink2()
Dim Cell As Range
Dim Cell2 As Range
Dim rng As Range
Dim Rng2 As Range
Set rng = Range("X2:X60000")
For Each Cell In rng
If Cell <> "" Then ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add Cell, Cell.Value
Next
Set Rng2 = Range("X60001:X120000")
For Each Cell2 In Rng2
If Cell2 <> "" Then ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Add Cell2, Cell2.Value
Next
End Sub
Hope that helps someone else who stumbles upon this via google (like I did) looking for a workable solution...

Answer 5

The 255 character limit applies to the limit of character that can be put in one cell's formula. A common approach to this is by splitting the link into multiple cells and using a formula to combine them.
=HYPERLINK(A1&A2,"Click Here")