Can Excel interpret the URLs in my CSV as hyperlinks?

Question

Can Excel interpret the URLs in my CSV as hyperlinks? If so, how?

Answer 1

You can actually do this and have Excel show a clickable link. Use this format in the CSV file:

=HYPERLINK("URL")

So the CSV would look like:

1,23.4,=HYPERLINK("http://www.google.com")

However, I'm trying to get some links with commas in them to work properly and it doesn't look like there's a way to escape them and still have Excel make the link clickable.

Does anyone know how?

Answer 2

With embedding the hyperlink function you need to watch the quotes. Below is an example of a CSV file created that lists an error and a link to view the documentation on the method that failed. (Bit esoteric but that's what I am working on)

"Details","Failing Method (click to view)"
"Method failed","=HYPERLINK(""http://some_url_with_documentation"",""Method_name"")"

Answer 3

I read all of these answers and some others but it still took a while to work it out in Excel 2014.

The result in the csv should look like this

"=HYPERLINK(""http://www.Google.com"",""Google"")"

Note: If you are trying to set this from MSSQL server then

'"=HYPERLINK(""http://www.' + baseurl + '.com"",""' + baseurl + '"")"' AS url

Answer 4

you can URL Encode your commas inside the URL so the URL is not split across multiple cells.

Just replace commas with %2c

http://www.xyz.com/file,comma.pdf

becomes

=hyperlink("http://www.xyz.com/file%2ccomma.pdf")