Excel. SECURITY WARNING Automatic update of links has been disabled. What is the danger of links?

Question

Hello.
When I open a book that has formulas that link to other books, a panel appears at the top: SECURITY WARNING Automatic update of links has been disabled.
What is the danger of links? Give an example where link can harm the computer.

Answer 1

A link can point to a website. A website can contain malicious code. Google for all the malware currently running around on the Internet for examples of exactly what is possible just by going to a website. It is really easy to do because a website can run client side code.

This is the same problem that email clients (and anything else that renders HTML) have and why one of the things they always teach in security training at every company you'll probably ever work at is that you never, ever click a link unless you are sure that you trust that link.

Answer 2

cooldadtx, can you give an example of a formula where the formula refers to a file on a web page?

Answer 3

@Participant ,
Welocome to Q&A forum!
What version of Office are you using?

> When I open a book that has formulas that link to other books,

<< How did you get this Workbook? Created it by yourself or from others? And where did you save it?

> What is the danger of links?

<< As cooldadtx said, a link may point to a website that contains malicious code. And the links usually from the Internet or other places where you are not sure whether it is safe or not.

Please refer to this offcial article Find links (external references) in a workbook to check whether there are other external links in your Workbook(including formulas, defined names, objects, chart titles, and chart data series).

Any updates, please let me know.

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Answer 4

VikiJi-MSFT, can you give an example of a formula where the formula refers to a file on a web page?

Answer 5

VikiJi-MSFT, make an example on the version that you have.