Is there a way of getting rid of your username in the dropbox link?

[nikiband]

My team works in Excel quite often and we link cells from one dropbox excel file to another. The issue is that, when we link the cells, it is linked to a specific user so if someone else goes into the file, they are not able to refresh the formulas without there being a bunch of #REF errors. Is there a way to get rid of this portion username portion so the file updated universally?

[Jay]

Hi @nikiband, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Just for clarification, are you referring to formulas in the Excel page that refer to another spreadsheet, or are these macros, or shared links to a person's Dropbox account?

This will help me to assist further!

[Rich · Accepted solution]

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@nikiband wrote:

My team works in Excel quite often and we link cells from one dropbox excel file to another. The issue is that, when we link the cells, it is linked to a specific user so if someone else goes into the file, they are not able to refresh the formulas without there being a bunch of #REF errors.

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This isn't a Dropbox issue. The problem you're experiencing is caused by Excel (and most applications) using the full path in the links to other cells, sheets, files, etc. The "username" that you're seeing is actually the name of the user's Windows profile folder, which is usually where Dropbox is stored by default.

You may be able to get around this by changing all of your links to use an environment variable, but you'd need a bit of Visual Basic code as well since Excel can't directly access environment variables. Take a look at the following discussion.

• https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-do-i-use-an-environment-variable-within-t...

In that discussion they're referring to a linked image, but I imagine the process would work for a link to another cell/sheet as well.

[nikiband1]

Yes, formulas in another sheet. If I click on a cell, the formula I see will show 'C:\Users\****\Dropbox (XXXX)\Finance\FP&A\XXX\Repository\[Financial_Repository.xlsx. Is there a way to get rid of the Users\Person's name so a file can be refreshed by anyone who wants to and not just the user who has linked the sheets?

[Jay]

Thanks for the info. In Microsoft Excel, you can create links in a workbook to another workbook or file on your computer using a formula that references an external location. When this link is created, it points to a location on your own hard drive.

When your workbook is downloaded onto another's computer, the locations that your formula points to are no longer there. The link in the workbook is looking for a specific place, for example /Your_Computer/Your_User/File, and that location is no longer accessible from a different computer.

To learn more about relative and external paths in Excel please consult this Microsoft support page.

While we are unable to support you in configuring Microsoft Excel to work the way you would like, we suggest perhaps using wildcards in your formulas. Wildcards, such as "%HOMEPATH%”, if other users have the Dropbox folder located in the default location, would let you point to a location without having to worry about different usernames in the path.