Office XP Tips: Hyperlink Office XP Documents

Link to documents, worksheets, presentations, and Web pages.

Jim Welp

Office XP offers a variety of ways to interconnect documents, worksheets, presentations, Web pages, and e-mail messages. You can link, embed, copy, paste, click, drag, and drop until your work is more deeply intertwined than the British royal family. Much of this may be second nature to you. For instance, you probably copy and paste information from one Office document to another almost every day. And if you use Excel, you probably have occasion to link or embed spreadsheet data in Word files or PowerPoint presentations. But one handy feature you might not consider for hookin Office documents together is the good ol' Web-style hyperlink.

As you probably know, Office applications automatically create hyperlinks when you type a Web or e-mail address. When Office recognizes text as a Web or e-mail address, it displays the text in blue and creates a link to that address. You can then visit the address or launch an e-mail message by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking the hyperlink. While this makes it easy to link to a Web page or an e-mail recipient, it's also a cinch to link to other Office XP documents in a variety of ways. You can create a hyperlink to another location in your current document, worksheet, or presentation--or link to another file altogether. When you or a co-worker Ctrl-click that link, the destination file opens.

This offers a couple of advantages over other methods. First, you can save disk space by linking to external data instead of including a copy of it in your current document. Second, this lets you takes advantage of the Web style of consuming information, which allows readers to focus on the topic at hand and access background or other related information if needed. One disadvantage: You have to explicitly tell your readers that unlike the links in Web pages that they simply click, they must Ctrl-click the hyperlinks in documents.

Hot-Rod Linkin'

To create a hyperlink, open your Word document, Excel worksheet, or PowerPoint presentation and type the text you want to make into a hyperlink. Next, select that text and choose Insert, Hyperlink.

If you create a lot of hyperlinks, you'll want to use one of these shortcuts:

• Go to the Standard Toolbar and click the Insert Hyperlink button, which looks like a globe on a treadmill.
• Press Ctrl-K.
• Right-click the selected text and choose Hyperlink from the pop-up menu.

Once you get the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, you'll find four options for your hyperlinking pleasure:

• Existing File or Web Page
• Place in This Document
• Create New Document
• E-mail Address

Choose one of these options and the dialog box changes to let you fine-tune your hyperlink. To create a hyperlink to an existing Office XP file, select Existing File or Web Page. The Insert Hyperlink dialog box provides you with a directory listing. Find the file you want link to (no matter which application it was created in) in the "Current Folder," "Browsed Pages," or "Recent Files" fields or navigate using the familiar "Look in" list, then select it and click OK. Presto: You've got a live link.

Another handy use of hyperlinks--which is particularly useful for long documents--is to create links to other sections of the same document. To link to another location in the current document, select your text, open the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, and select Place in This Document. If you're using Word, you can link to the top of the document or to any headings or bookmarks you've created. (You can bookmark any text using the Insert, Bookmark command.) In Excel, you can link to any cell or range name. And in PowerPoint, you can link to a particular slide or slide show.

If you're zipping along in your file and decide to link to a new document, you can create one on the fly by choosing the Insert Hyperlink dialog box's Create New Document option. Simply assign a name to your new document, worksheet, or presentation, choose whether to edit it now or later, and click OK.

Don't Overdo It

No doubt the previous paragraphs have prompted you to go hyperlink crazy. Now your documents are bluer than John Lee Hooker during an income-tax audit. You can remove hyperlinks by right-clicking the link and choosing Remove Hyperlink from the pop-up menu. If you'd like to edit a hyperlink you previously created, right-click it and choose Edit Hyperlink from the pop-up menu.

Link 'n' Drag

You're probably impressed by how easy it is to create hyperlinks in Office XP, huh? Nothing could be easier, right? Wrong. You want easy? Select any text (or cell border in Excel), then right-click and drag it to any location. When you let go of the right mouse button, choose Create Hyperlink Here from the pop-up menu. Office links you to your source text. (To change the link's text, right-click it, choose Edit Hyperlink, and modify the text in the "Text to display" box.) You can make dragging text from one open document to another easier by choosing Window, Arrange All so that both document windows are on screen. Or you can use my favorite trick and drag your text to the Windows taskbar icon that represents your destination document--be it Word, Excel, or PowerPoint--and Windows displays that document. Keep holding down the right mouse button, drag the text to where you want it to link in the destination document, and let go.

With all of these hyperlinks in your Office documents, you're bound to be the coolest person in your office, school, or penitentiary. Well, not quite. If you've got ScreenTips turned on (select Tools, Options, View, ScreenTips), you'll notice that when you hover your mouse pointer over a hyperlink, a pop-up box called a "ScreenTip" appears. Here's your chance to have fun: You can use these screen tips to express yourself. By default, they list a boring file source. To change the ScreenTip to something more descriptive or exciting, such as "I love you," or "check it out, snotface," here's what you do: Right-click the hyperlink and choose Edit Hyperlink. Next, click the ScreenTip button. In the Set Hyperlink ScreenTip dialog box, type your special message in the "ScreenTip text" text box. Now you really are the coolest person in your office, school, or penitentiary.