How to use Excel to test a list of URLs or links to see if any are broken

Link checking in Excel

Out of the box, Excel doesn’t test links to see if they’re broken. It does have a HYPERLINK function to make some text you’ve formatted as a URL to be clickable. But you still need to click the link, which is a pain with a long list. But with this cool add-in for Excel you can test your entire list using one of its Web Assistant functions called pwrISBROKENURL.

It does just what you think it might — it returns a TRUE value is the URL is broken. Using this function for checking links can be a huge time saver.

You can use it as simply as in this example.

=pwrISBROKENURL("https://officepowerups.com/brokenurl")

You can use this in a more complex formula and use more complex branching if you need, or whatever.

In order to automate link testing in Excel you’ll need to install an add-in. The add-in is called Excel PowerUps. To get the add-in (it has a fully functional free trial) just go here – there’s a version for both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Excel.

Link checking in Excel doesn’t have to be such a pain.

Here’s a video illustration of pwrISBROKENURL in action.

There you go.

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