In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to find external links in Excel quickly and easily.

How to Find External Links in Excel Cells

The first way to find external links is by searching within cell formulas. To do so, you need to use the Excel Find feature:

1. Open your Excel worksheet and press Ctrl + F to open the Find and Replace dialog box.
2. Select Options.
3. In the Find what box, type “.xl” to capture all Excel file extensions.
4. Under Within, select Workbook.
5. Under Look in, choose Formulas.
6. Select Find All. The Find and Replace window will display a list of all external links found within formulas inside your workbook.

Note: If you’ve linked your spreadsheet to an external workbook, the link name will display the workbook’s filename along with its .xl file extension. This should be either .xlsm, .xls, or .xlsx.

How to Find External Links in Defined Names

Defined names are used to name ranges and cells so that they’re easier to reference in formulas and data validation drop-down lists. These lists and formulas often reference external sources of data, so it’s worth searching them for external links:

1. Select the Formulas tab and then press Name Manager.
2. For each entry in the list, check the Refers To column. Links to external workbooks should be surrounded by square brackets, making them easy to find.

How to Find External Links in Objects

It’s possible to link objects like text boxes, shapes, and WordArt to external Excel files. To find external links within objects:

1. Open your Excel spreadsheet.
2. Press the Home tab.
3. Under Formats, choose Find & Select and then Go to Special.

4. In the Go to Special dialog box, tick the circle next to Objects and press OK.

5. Check the first object for external links, then press Tab to move to the next object. Continue until you’ve checked all objects for links to external data sources.

Note: To check each object for links, select the object and refer to the formula bar. Alternatively, hover over the object to see where the external link goes.

How to Find External Links in Excel Charts

To find any external links used in chart titles or chart data series:

1. Open the Excel sheet that contains the chart.
2. Select the chart title and check the formula bar for a reference to another file.

3. Select the data series and check the formula bar for external hyperlinks.

How to Find External Links in PivotTables

Occasionally, Excel users will create PivotTables that reference outside data. To check for external links in your PivotTables:

1. Select a cell within your PivotTable.
2. Under the PivotTable Analyze tab, select Change Data Source.

3. Check whether the source file next to “Table/Range” links to your current workbook or another workbook.

How to Break External Links in Excel

To break links in Microsoft Excel:

1. Select the Data tab.
2. Under the Queries & Connections group, select the Edit Links button. If the Edit Links option is gray, it means there are no links in your workbook.

3. When the Edit Links dialog box opens, choose the link you want to break, then select Break Link.

Note: This method will only help you break links that are present in your cells. Links in PivotTables, Charts, and elsewhere require a different method. Read our in-depth guide on how to break links in Microsoft Excel. If they won’t break, find out why.

Cleaning Up Your Excel Workbook

Broken links can be a nightmare, preventing your workbook from functioning correctly. Worse, Excel doesn’t make it easy to quickly scan, break, and replace links — you have to check each possible location manually or create complicated VBA code macros to do it for you. But with this guide, you should be able to find external links and clean your workbook up in no time.

In this article, we’ll explain how to print in black and white on Word.

How to Print a Word Document in Black and White

To print a document in black and white using the Microsoft Word app, you just need to change your print settings. The process should be the same whether you use a Windows 10, Windows 11, or Mac computer, but the settings will appear slightly differently depending on your printer.

Here’s how to print your document in black and white:

1. Open the Microsoft Word document you want to print in black and white.
2. Select the File menu.

3. Choose Print from the drop-down menu. Alternatively, press Ctrl + P to bring up the print dialog box.

4. Under Printer, choose the correct printer.

5. Select Printer Properties.

6. When the Printer Properties opens, choose the Quick Setup tab and tick the checkbox next to the Grayscale Printing color option. If this printing option isn’t here, check for similar settings. For example, for HP Smart Printing, it’s under Basic > Color Mode.

7. Select OK.
8. Select Print.

Make sure to change your printing preferences next time you want to print documents with color. To do so, open your document in MS Word, follow the steps above to access the print menu, and uncheck the Grayscale Printer setting. Then, simply click Print to print pages in full color.

Note: Occasionally, printers refuse to print black ink – or print at all. This odd glitch results in all of your documents coming out in colored ink. If this happens to you, find out what to do if your printer won’t print in black.

Printing Grayscale in Microsoft Office

A frustrating feature of modern printers is that when they print in grayscale, they sometimes use a combination of colored inks to mark the paper, which is far more expensive than using the black-and-white option. But hopefully, with this tutorial, you can print your documents in black and white and save your ink cartridges and money.

However, what happens if you want to remove the footer from your PowerPoint slides? You may want to keep the slide clean from any extra content. Thankfully, you can easily remove the footer from your PowerPoint slides using the steps below.

How to Remove the Footer from a PowerPoint Slide

If you want to remove the footer from your PowerPoint slides, you’ll need to access the Header and Footer menu. This is where you can see and edit your slides’ header and footer options. You can also remove or hide other elements such as slide numbers and the date or time from your slides.

To remove the footer from your PowerPoint slides, follow these steps.

1. Open your PowerPoint presentation and press the Insert tab on the ribbon bar.

2. Next, press the Header and Footer icon in the Text group. This will open a menu box where you’ll be able to edit the header and footer options for your slides.

3. To remove the footer, uncheck the Footer box under the Slide tab. You can also uncheck the Slide number and Date and time checkboxes if you don’t want them to appear on your slides.

4. Once you uncheck the boxes, you can choose whether to apply the changes to all slides or only to the selected slides. If you want to remove the footer from all slides, press Apply to All.

5. If you want to remove it from only some slides, select those slides first, then press Apply instead.

6. Your slides will be updated immediately. To undo the changes, press the Undo button in the top-left corner above the ribbon bar before saving your presentation.

How to Remove a Hidden Footer from a PowerPoint Slide Template

Trying to remove a footer from your slide, but it won’t disappear? If that’s the case, you’re probably trying to remove a hidden footer from a slide, without realizing that it’s applied to the slide template.

If you’re using a template that has a hidden text box in the footer, the template will override any settings you make to ensure that it remains visible. To remove this hidden footer, you’ll need to access the Slide Master view to remove it from your template.

To remove a hidden footer from a PowerPoint slide template, follow these steps.

1. Open your PowerPoint presentation and press Slide Master from the View tab on the ribbon bar.

2. This will show you the template slides that you’re using in your presentation. Look for the slide in your template that has a text box at the bottom with some footer text.

3. To remove it, select the text box and press Delete on your keyboard. Alternatively, you can edit or format that text box if you want to keep it but otherwise change its content or appearance.

4. When you’re done, press the Close Master View button to return to your standard PowerPoint slide view.

5. Press File > Save to save the changes to your presentation.

Editing Your PowerPoint Presentation

If you’ve decided to remove the footer from your Microsoft PowerPoint slides, you can use the steps above to help you. If you disable the footer, it’ll disappear from view, but it won’t be completely removed—you can always re-enable it afterward.

You can also add new headers and footers to your PowerPoint presentation after removing them. If you’re running out of space, you can also resize your PowerPoint slides to increase your space for text and other content.

Don’t go too text-heavy, though. You may want to consider adding other visual elements, like a YouTube video, instead.

We’ll show you how to convert dates to numbers, specifically serial numbers, in Excel. The method you use depends on how Excel stores dates in your worksheet; basically, how they are formatted.

Determine How Your Dates Are Formatted

Before you use one of the methods below to convert your date to a serial number, you need to determine how the date is formatted. By default, when you enter a date in Excel, it’s formatted as a date which is technically a number value. However, there may be instances where you enter, convert, or import dates that end up formatted as text values.

You can easily select the cell containing the date, head to the Home tab, and look at the Number Format drop-down box to see the current format of the cell. As you can see here, our date is formatted as a Date (number).

However, if you have many dates that you plan to convert, the above method can be tedious. Plus, if you have something random, for example, an apostrophe in front of the date, it may display in the Date format but be considered text when you try to convert it.

Instead, two simple Excel functions can help you.

Using the ISNUMBER Function

The ISNUMBER function lets you know if your data is formatted as a number and ISTEXT lets you know if it’s formatted as text. Depending on which you want to use, you’ll receive a True or False result.

To see if the dates in cells A2 through A13 are formatted as numbers, you’d use the following formula:

=ISNUMBER(A2:A13)

You can see here we receive a True result for those dates that are formatted as numbers and False for the one that is not.

Using the ISTEXT Function

If you prefer to see if your dates are formatted as text, use this formula:

=ISTEXT(A2:A13)

Like the other function, here we can see True for those dates formatted as text and False for the one that is not.

You can also use these functions to check a single cell with this formula if you like:

=ISTEXT(A2)

Once you determine the formatting for your date, you can use the corresponding method below to convert it to a serial number.

Convert a Numeric Date to a Serial Number

If you find that your date is formatted as a numeric value, you can simply change the format to display the serial number.

1. Select the cell or cell range and go to the Home tab.
2. Open the Number Format drop-down list and pick Number.

3. You should see the dates in your selected cells as the serial numbers.

4. You can then keep the cells selected and use the Decrease Decimal button in the Number section of the Home tab to remove the decimals.

Convert Dates to Numbers Without Decimals

If you prefer, you can convert the dates and remove the decimals in one fell swoop.

1. Select the cells containing the dates, right-click, and pick Format Cells. Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + 1 on Windows or Command + 1 on Mac.
2. In the Format Cells dialog box, go to the Number tab and choose Number on the left.

3. You’ll see a preview of the serial number at the top. Change the Decimal Places setting to 0 and select OK to save the change.

4. You’ll then see your dates changed to serial numbers without decimals.

Convert a Text Date to a Serial Number

If you determine your date is using a text format, you can use a handy Excel date function. With the DATEVALUE function, you can quickly convert text dates to serial numbers.

The syntax is DATEVALUE(text) where you can use a cell reference, range, or exact date as the argument.

In this example, we’ll convert the cell range A2 through A13 from text dates to numbers with this formula:

=DATEVALUE(A2:A13)

As you can see, we have serial numbers for each date in our cell range. You may then want to remove the original dates or replace them by dragging the serial number range over them, per your preference.

To convert a single cell, use this formula replacing the cell reference with your own:

=DATEVALUE(A2)

To convert a specific date using the function, place the date within quotation marks as in these formulas:

=DATEVALUE(“1/1/2024”)

=DATEVALUE(“1-JANUARY-2024”)

=DATEVALUE(“2024/01/01”)

If you have trouble with your Excel formula, check out the possible causes and solutions.

In Excel, converting dates to numbers, specifically serial numbers, takes only a few minutes using these methods. For related tutorials, look at how to sort by date in Excel.

What happens when an Outlook folder falls out of favor, though? You can manage the folders in your Favorites list in Microsoft Outlook to help you remove the ones that you no longer need to worry about. You can also disable the feature entirely. To remove your Favorites folders in Microsoft Outlook, follow the steps below.

What Are Favorites Folders in Microsoft Outlook?

Favorites folders are shortcuts to folders that you frequently use in Outlook that appear in the navigation pane on the left-hand side.

As these are links to the original folders in your main folder list, they won’t interrupt their actual position—you can still find them in the main list if you need to. Likewise, when you remove it from Favorites, it doesn’t delete the folder, just the link to it.

Depending on the version of Outlook you’re using, Outlook may automatically add some folders to your Favorites list. This includes the Inbox, Sent Items, Drafts, and Deleted Items folders. However, you can add any other folder to the section by dragging and dropping it there.

You can also right-click a folder in the main list and select Show in Favorites. Alternatively, press the Show in Favorites button in the Folder tab on the ribbon bar.

How to Remove a Folder from the Favorites List in Outlook

If you want to remove a single folder from the Favorites list in Outlook, you can do so by following these steps.

1. Open the Outlook client and select the Mail tab in the bottom-left corner.

2. Right-click on the folder that you want to remove from the Favourites list.
3. Select Remove from Favourites to remove the shortcut.

The folder will disappear from the Favourites section. However, it’ll still appear in your main folder list for your email account in Outlook. It’s important to state that if you delete the folder at any point, it’ll also be removed from the Favourites list (unless you can recover your deleted folder afterward).

How to Remove All Folders from the Favourites List in Outlook

You can also remove the Favourites list entirely by removing all of the folders from the list. With no folders in the list, the Favourites section will disappear entirely until you decide to add a folder to it again.

To remove all folders from the Favourites list in Outlook at once, follow these steps.

1. Open the Outlook client and select the Mail tab.

2. Next, make sure that the full list of folders in the Favourites section are visible.
3. Right-click on the first folder and select Remove from Favourites to remove it from the list.

4. Repeat this for all of the folders in the Favourites list.

Once the last folder is removed, the section will disappear until a folder is added again.

How to Restore a Folder to the Favourites List in Outlook

If you’ve previously removed a folder from the Favourites list in Outlook, you can restore it easily at any point. To restore a folder to the Favourites list in Outlook, follow these steps.

1. Open the Outlook client and make sure that the Mail tab is active.

2. Make sure that your full list of folders is visible for your email account in the panel on the left.
3. To re-add a folder to the list, right-click the folder in your main list and select Add to Favourites.

4. The folder will appear at the bottom of your Favourites list—drag and drop it to a new position if required.
5. Alternatively, drag the folder from the main list and drop it in the Favourites section to create a shortcut for it there.

How to Disable Favourites in Microsoft Outlook

If you don’t want to remove each folder individually, there’s another way to disable the Favourites folder in Outlook. You can do this via the Folder Pane settings menu.

To disable the Favourites folder in Microsoft Outlook, follow these steps.

1. Open your Outlook client and make sure that the Mail tab is selected.

2. On the ribbon bar, select the View tab.
3. Press the Folder Pane (or Navigation Pane) button, depending on your Outlook version.
4. From the drop-down menu, check that the Favourites option is unchecked. If there’s a checkbox next to Favourites, select it to remove it.

After unchecking the Favourites option, the section will disappear from the folder pane on the left. If you change your mind and want to enable the Favourites section again, repeat these steps, making sure that the Favourites checkbox is active in the Folder Pane (or Navigation Pane) menu.

Managing Your Outlook Account

If you’re an Outlook power user, the Favourites list can quickly help you switch between your most regularly accessed folders. It’s easy to switch out, remove, and re-add folders you need, but you can also disable the feature entirely if it’s getting in the way.

Want to take things further? You can create calendar groups in Outlook to group important calendars together and help you see your important tasks and events. If Outlook starts running too slowly, however, you may need to think about clearing out some of your old folders (and emails) next.