Adding Hyperlinks to Office Documents

Adding Hyperlinks to Office Documents

Microsoft Office provides several features that allow you to integrate features that you typically associate with the World Wide Web into the Office documents that you create. Office documents can be saved in the HTML format and then incorporated into Web pages. Hyperlinks can be placed into Office documents, including Excel workbooks and even Access tables. A hyperlink is a text entry or a graphic that, when clicked, opens a Web page on the World Wide Web, a file on your hard disk, or a file on a local network.

Hyperlinks are basically pointers that enable you to quickly access Web content or another file when the hyperlink is clicked. Hyperlinks can also take the form of an e-mail address and can be used to quickly fire off an e-mail message when the link is selected.

Adding a hyperlink to an Office document follows pretty much the same procedure in all the Office applications. In fact, the Insert Hyperlink dialog box is identical in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Access (you can also add hyperlinks to Outlook e- mails in a Insert Hyperlink dialog box that requires you to type the hyperlink address).

Next, take a look at adding a hyperlink to an Excel worksheet. To add a hyperlink, follow these steps:

1. Select the text or graphic you want to use for the hyperlink (in Excel, select a cell ; in Access, click in a Table field).

2. Select the Insert menu and then select Hyperlink . The Insert Hyperlink dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 7.1.

   Figure 7.1. Insert a hyperlink into an Office document, such as an Excel worksheet.

   

3. Type the address of the Web page to be used by the hyperlink into the Address box at the bottom of the dialog box.

4. If you would like to select the address of the Web page from a list of Web sites that you have recently browsed with Internet Explorer, click the Browsed Pages button in the dialog box. Click a link in the list that appears. It will be placed into the Address box.

5. If the link is to an e-mail address rather than to a Web page or file on your computer, click the E-Mail Address icon on the left of the dialog box.

6. A list of recently used e-mail addresses that you can select from appears in the dialog box, or you can type the e-mail address into the E-Mail Address box, as shown in Figure 7.2.

   Figure 7.2. Hyperlinks to e-mail addresses can also be inserted the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

   

7. To display a ScreenTip when the mouse pointer rests on the hyperlink, click the ScreenTip button; in the dialog box that appears, enter the description you want to display. Click OK .

8. Click OK to close the Insert Hyperlink dialog box. The text or graphic that was selected becomes a hyperlink. Text hyperlinks appear in a blue font and are underlined .

Figure 7.3 shows a text hyperlink that has been added to an Excel worksheet on the words "Link to First Quarter Summary Web page." The link could be used to quickly access a Web page that has information related to the worksheet shown in the figure.

Figure 7.3. Hyperlinks provide quick access to Web pages and files.

When you move the mouse pointer over this link, it changes to a hand. Next to the hand, you can see the address of the link. Click the link and you jump to the appropriate worksheet, Web page, file, or e-mail program. The text color of the link changes to purple to indicate that you have used the link.

Creating Hyperlinks to Documents on Your Computer To insert a hyperlink for a document on your computer, use the Look In box in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box to find the drive that the file resides on, and then open the appropriate folder to locate the file. Select the file in the dialog box to create the link.