External Links Not Displayed in Data > External Links Dialog – LibreOffice Calc 25.2.2.2

Description:
In LibreOffice Calc, external links that were previously entered are not showing up in the Data > External Links dialog.
The dialog box remains empty, even though:

  • The external links were definitely added earlier.
  • They can still be found as text entries in the FODT export variant of the file.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Create a Calc file with external links (e.g., link to another spreadsheet).
  2. Save and reopen the file.
  3. Go to Data > External Links.
  4. Observe that the dialog is empty, even though the external link should exist.

Expected Behavior:
The external links should be listed in Data > External Links.

Actual Behavior:
The dialog box is empty despite external links being present in the document structure (visible when exported).

System Information:

Version: 25.2.2.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 7370d4be9e3cf6031a51beef54ff3bda878e3fac
CPU threads: 16; OS: Windows 11 X86_64 (10.0 build 26100);
UI render: Skia/Vulkan; VCL: win
Locale: cs-CZ (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded

Additional Notes:

  • Links are visible as raw text in the FODT version of the file.
  • Security message is suggesting to allow opening external sources on opening the file and the cells are updated after user interaction.

My English user interface has no menu command Data>External Links.
Calc has 5 types of links:

  1. ='file:///path/other.ods'#Sheet1.A1
  2. =DDE("soffice","C:\path\other.ods";"Sheet1.A1")
  3. menu:Sheet>“Insert sheet from file…” with “Link” option.
  4. menu:Sheet>“Link to external data”
  5. Dragging a query from the data source window creates a named database range visible in menu:Data>Define… with connection details under “More options”.

Types 1 to 4 generate entries in dialog menu:Edit>Links…

1 Like

Dear Villeroy,

I believe we are just seeing different versions of the Calc UI. Here is how the dialog box appears for me:

  • Method 1: Entering the formula directly into the cell results in a #NAME? error. The file path was copied from the .fods file, so it should be something Calc understands correctly.

  • Method 2: Not applicable for CSV files.

  • Method 3: Works fine. A new sheet is created, starting from cell A1. I can link these cells where needed in another sheet. But such way I already found. Oh, and there are links under Edit > External links...

  • Method 4: Not valid for me. I do not see any “Link to external data” option in the Sheet context menu.

  • Method 5: Opens a completely new Calc instance and offers to import the CSV file into a new ODS file.

Regs,
M

Also, I do not see all the context menu items you mentioned for the Sheet:
image

I can see this menu item in the Standard Toolbar UI, but I cannot find these in the Tabbed UI.

Menu / View / Press Menubar.
Additionally, get access to the full menu.

1 Like