About hyperlinks

A hyperlink is a link from a document that opens another page or file when you click it. The destination is frequently another Web page, but it can also be a picture, or an e-mail address, or a program. The hyperlink itself can be text or a picture.

When a site visitor clicks the hyperlink, the destination is shown in a Web browser, opened, or run, depending on the type of destination. For example, a hyperlink to a page shows the page in the Web browser, and a hyperlink to an AVI file opens the file in a media player.

You can use hyperlinks to do the following:

Navigate to a file or Web page on a network, intranet or Internet
Navigate to a file or Web page that you plan to create in the future
Send an e-mail message
Start a file transfer, such as downloading or an FTP process

When you point to text or a picture that contains a hyperlink, the pointer becomes a hand Pointer in the shape of a hand , indicating that the text or picture is something you can click.

When you create a hyperlink, its destination is encoded as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), such as:

http://example.microsoft.com/news.htm

file://ComputerName/SharedFolder/FileName.htm

A URL contains a protocol, such as HTTP, FTP, or FILE, a Web server or network location, and a path and file name. The following illustration defines the parts of the URL:

The parts of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

Callout 1 Protocol used (http, ftp, file)

Callout 2 Web server or network location

Callout 3 Path

Callout 4 File name

An absolute URL contains a full address, including the protocol, the Web server, and the path and file name.

A relative URL has one or more missing parts. The missing information is taken from the page that contains the URL. For example, if the protocol and Web server are missing, the Web browser uses the protocol and domain, such as .com, .org, or .edu, of the current page.

It is common for pages in a Web to use relative URLs containing only a partial path and file name. If the files are moved to another server, any hyperlinks will continue to work as long as the relative positions of the pages remain unchanged. For example, a hyperlink on Products.htm points to a page named apple.htm in a folder named Food; if both pages are moved to a folder named Food on a different server, the URL in the hyperlink will still be correct.

In a Microsoft Excel workbook, unspecified paths to hyperlink destination files are by default relative to the location of the active workbook. You can set a different base address to use by default so that each time you create a hyperlink to a file in that location, you'll only have to specify the file name, not the path, in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.