HYPERLINK(link location, friendly name)

Creates a hyperlink jump to a remote document specified by link location. The remote document could be any local file (a Write document or spreadsheet) or a URL to an Internet location.

Friendly name is an optional parameter that masks the actual link details with more meaningful text. If friendly name is omitted, the function displays the link location.

HYPERLINK is different to all other functions in that it creates an interface componant for the user – as the mouse pointer is moved over the text it will change into a pointer and by default, the text is displayed in a blue underlined font. HYPERLINK is very similar to links used in web pages.

Examples:

=HYPERLINK("http://www.ability.com/")

Displays http://www.ability.com/ and opens the web site using the default browser.

=HYPERLINK("http://www.ability.com/", "Ability's web site")

Displays Ability's web site but otherwise behaves exactly as above.

=HYPERLINK(A1, A2)

Displays whatever is in A2 and opens the file/URL defined in A1.

=HYPERLINK("c:\my documents\myfile.aww", "My text file")

Runs Write and opens the file myfile.aww

Note: if the link location points to a local document, the associated program will be launched to open the file. For example if you have Microsoft's Paint as the default editor for all bmp (bitmap) files, then Paint would be launched if HYPERLINK specified a file with a .bmp extension.

See also:

Other remote functions