Linking workbooks in Excel
3 min readJun 24, 2022
So today we are going to learn how to link workbooks in Excel.
Dataset used
We are going to be using 4 datasets which have 4 sheets in each of them
Each workbook has a sheet called Chris,Anna, Stella and total.
Chris,Anna and Stella’s sheets contain the profit they have made in different products from Q1-Q3.
Steps
- To begin the linking process, we open the workbook that we want our answers to be (In our case we want to sum up the totals across branches)
- Then we open up the other workbooks.
- Now we have all 4 workbooks open but we can only see one workbook at a time. So to solve this, we go to the view tab and click on arrange all
- A dialog box appears. Tick tiled and press ok.
- And just like that we can see the 4 work all at the same time.
- Now we want to carry out our calculations
- So we go to the workbook, then input the equal to sign and click on each cell you want to add
- But you’ll notice it applies absolute referencing by default eg $A$4
- In order to be able to copy the formulas we have to remove the Dollar signs
- After that you press enter
- Then drag the formula across
- So that’s it. The workbooks are linked
Additional steps
- If you would like to remove (break) a link, you go to the Data tab and check the connections group
- Click on edit links
- Then you’ll see the links in a dialog box
- You can choose to break links or change the source of a workbook