For years now, I’ve offered a free Excel add-in I call “Links Live” that lets you make columns of hyperlinks live, or “clickable”.
This summer, there was a Windows security update that caused the add-in to become disabled each time you opened up Excel.
In order to get the add-in to stay live, you now have to edit the properties of the file and “Unblock” before installation.
If you’ve already installed it, then these are steps you should take:
- Move or rename the add-in wherever it’s installed.
- Start Excel, Go to Manage Add-Ins, untick the add-in and Excel will prompt you to remove from the list, which you do.
- Close Excel
- Browse to the add-in in Windows Explorer and right-click Properties.
- There should be an option to unblock the file. Tick this and OK. Click Properties again and make sure this box has disappeared.
- Restart Excel and reinstall the addin.
- Next time Excel is started, the add-in should open normally.
Here’s a short video showing how to “fix it” if you’ve already got it installed.
