Workbook Link Support Enabled in Excel for the web

Delighting our customers with faster, smoother, and frictionless experiences in Excel for the web is an uncompromised goal across the Excel team. With this in mind, we recently added Workbook Link Support to Excel for the Web, to help customers quickly launch and edit their Excel documents.

In response to customer feedback, this represents another significant step toward quickly opening Excel files and editing them with less interruption in the process. This communication is meant to highlight the changes our customers are asking for, and to reaffirm our commitment and ongoing investment in Excel for the web rich end user experiences.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID: 71476

When this will happen

This feature began rollout in August-2020 and is available to all Excel for the web users today.

How this will affect your organization

Previously when opening a workbook with external links, customers would encounter a warning telling them external workbook links were unsupported. Users were directed to use the desktop version of Excel or could continue working but would not have support for external links.

Excel for the web now supports workbook links. Users no longer receive a warning message and can easily refresh and manage these links from the new workbook links task pane.

What you need to do to prepare

You may want to notify your helpdesk to make them aware of these improvements, and to prepare them in response to Excel for the web changes / enhancement related helpdesk calls.