Back button to navigate backward through hyperlinks in Calc

Dear all, it would be very helpful for me to be able to get back to the previous position in the same Calc-file after clicking a hyperlink in Calc, but have not managed to get this done so far. Is there any plugin or macro to implement this? Excel has buttons available for this, which can also be anchored in the QuickAccess bar. There was a similar request some years ago from somebody else (Browser style forward and back buttons in Calc), who was encouraged to file a bug report, but I can find no bug report and no solution after a lengthy search. I wouldbe very grateful for any suggestions.

Yes I raised this question about 10 years ago!
It was raised here: 36449 – UI Forward and Back buttons a la web browsers and IDEs
Forward/Back buttons are available in write but not calc.
The idea seems to have been dismissed; I think this is wrong!
I would dearly like to see Forward/Back buttons in Calc.
Maybe you could champion the idea!

Dear Nick, thank you for the link. I read through the thread and felt that some people did not understand the potential use of these buttons.
In simple words: many Calc documents have hyperlinks which - once clicked - send the cursor to another place on the same spreadsheet or in other spreadsheets of the document. Such a Back button would send you back to the previous position (=position of the previously clicked hyperlink) with one click. There is no other way to achieve this: for example the Navigator would offer you a long list of names, images etc in the entire document, but no way to easily find and directly select the element you had your cursor on before the last click.
Since Writer already has such a feature, it should be relatively easy to implement in Calc as well.
Since Calc also has hyperlinks like Writer, why have Back/Forward buttons only in Writer and not also in Calc?
A couple of additions for the sake of better clarity:

  1. I am not interested i springing among Calc or other files. A Calc hyperlink can also be use to open another file, but the button I am referring to would just get you back if your clicked hyperlink sent you to another position in the same Calc document
  2. Actually the only important button is the Back button. Instead ot the forward button, you can just click on the hyperlink again.
  3. I am not interested in getting back to the last modified position of the Calc document (which was mentioned in the thread suggested by Nick, but would be much more complicated to implement), the requested behaviour is just to get back to the last hyperlink that was clicked. This should be much easier to realize.

I would be very grateful for any suggestions.

Edit: I also made an entry in the bug thread incidated by Nick above (thanks again for the link Nick!)

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Yes I completely agree with you.

Heiko Tietze stated “Enhancement requests without a use case make not much sense” but I believe a use case has been very clearly stated; When jumping around a spreadsheet via hyperlinks, having a “Back” button to return to previous jump points would be extremely useful. If it is useful in Writer, then its useful in Calc. Heiko’s comment that you just use the Navigator is not correct; the Navigator does not show previous jump points; in this scenario the Navigator is only useful if you remember your last jump point and if Navigator has an entry for that jump point - which it might not!

I really do not thing that closing this as "REOLVED WORKSFORME " was justified at all!

As for suggestions on how to proceed all I can think is to re-open the bug with a strong argument in its favour and explanation as to why it should not have been closed.

I reopened the issue (see Edit of my last post above), and this was closed again by the mods with the request to open a new Bug. So, here is the new link for anyone interested:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=160504
Edit: now as 160505 – Implement "recency" navigation for Calc module and make available from TB or Sidebar Navigator by the mods

Welcome!
It seems to me that you are looking for something like this:

Unfortunately, that topic was abandoned, and the corresponding extension never appeared. (IMHO)

Dear John, thank you, yes, such an extension would serve the purpose well, from what I read in the linked thread, but coding it from scratch is beyond my capabilities at present. I have seen the general steps for creation of an extension (Development/Create a Hello World LibreOffice extension - The Document Foundation Wiki), do you have the code that should be used or at least the code used in the linked *.ods file? The *.ods file provided actually brought my internet connection down the second I clicked it (this might have been a coincidence, but afterwards had to restart both my computer and my router to get online again). Thank you.

I was alarmed by your message - this should not have happened. I looked through the entire macro code again, there is nothing there that could lead to such system behavior. I think you’re right - it was a coincidence.