Hyperlink to file on harddsik doesn't work properly EXCEL MAC

Hello all,

I am using Excel on the Mac and I am having a strange problem. I use the following formula to open a file, but instead of opening the file, Excel displays a dialog that the file could not be opened. Of course, the file exists on my hard drive in the associated folder (see screenshot below).

=If(A2="";"";HYPERLINK("file:///user/moritz/documents/office/2022/2_documents/"&A2&".pdf"; "Link"))

If I create a new Excel document just for testing purposes and insert a link via the Excels menu (Insert>Link), then it is possible to open the document. Only the usual security warning does show up, but easy. If I now switch back to my actual document, I can suddenly open the file as well via my formula. If I change the file name in the formula input field in my test document to a document that exists in the same folder too, Excel asks me for an additional permission for opening the file (see screenshot below). Afterwards I can open the file in my actual document too, which was impossibe before.

So it seems to have something to do with permissions. That's why I gave Excel full disk access in the Mac security settings. But the problem still persists.

What is the reason for this? What can I do?

The goal is that I can always open a suitable PDF dynamically via the formula above, which I define in column A by entering the file name.

Many thanks and best regards,

Moritz

Actual document

Testing document

How it looks like in finder

Asking for additional permission, in my case in german, but this is not a language problem ;)

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Answer

Igor Tarasuga MSFT

Hello, Moritz

We apologize for misunderstanding.

In my last reply I tried to say that we encounter the same issue in our tests and I’m afraid there is no option to change it. We apologize for inconvenience.

We will keep trying to find a solution and for now as a workaround you may try the following

Go to an empty cell, control-click and select HYPERLINK.
Click select to navigate to the file you want to link.
Delete the file name (and any subfolders, if necessary) in the path until the path is only to the parent folder that contains files.
Then click OK and it will insert the hyperlink to that folder in the cell.
Click the link, and a Grant File Access window pops up, click Select... navigate back to your parent folder and click Grant Access.
In the security window, click yes and the folder opens.
Links insert via the path name in that folder should work.

Please accept our apologies if this answer doesn’t meet your requirement. To address your concern about the Excel, we’d suggest you kindly leave a feedback: How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office?

Best Regards,

Igor

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Hyperlink to file on harddsik doesn't work properly EXCEL MAC

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Hyperlink to file on harddsik doesn't work properly EXCEL MAC

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