Non-existent link

I deleted my named ranges one by one.

The non-existent link went away upon deleting a named range who's Refers To = had nothing to do with the Source File that could not be found! In fact it referred to a sheet within the workbook. It was a Dynamic Named Range created with OFFSET.

I need the link, so I changed the Sheet Name, manually changed the refers to to the temporary sheet name and resolved the problem.

It's a mystery but the link is gone! Maybe that "volatile OFFSET" is the culprit???

Thanks for the tip to check named ranges. How could I have forgotten about them there are SO MANY in this workbook!

After 6 months of trying to ignore it; Mine turned out to be caused by one cell's Data Validation criteria.

During a coding oversight I had set up a cell to select from a drop down list which I had set up in a different Workbook and linked to it from within the Data Validation Source box of my target (erroneous) cell.

It's a trick that I don't think is supposed to be legitimate in Excel but I've found a way of doing it frequently and successfully elsewhere in the workbook.

It looks like I came unstuck when the external workbook became redundant and I moved all other pointers away from that external workbook, except I clearly forgot about that one hidden cell validation.

I found it by saving a destructible copy of the book with the bad link and deleted sheets until the 'Edit Links' button went grey (assuming that is your ONLY remaining link otherwise you will need to manually click the Edit Links button to see). Then repeatedly closed without saving so I could deductively delete stuff on that same sheet until I found the lame cell, realised it had a drop down next to it when I selected it (which didn't drop any list) and there you go, dodgy link hidden in its Data Validation...

I've got volatile OFFSET ranges pointing to external workbooks all over the show, but after first deleting all of them - that wasn't it.

happy hunting.

If anyone knows a better (legitimate??) way of getting a drop down list from an other workbook then I'm all ears

I just used the comment/tip from Norfolknclue (yes, I know it's an old post - but I wanted to show appreciation towards it) to check for the mysterious Excel links within Data Validation.
There were cells that did not appear to have drop-downs but they were under control of Data Validation with drop-downs.
The Data Validation range was a list that was pointing to another file.
Changing the Data validation to allow Any Values was the solution -- that is, unless you need to point it to a valid range in your file.
This resolved and removed the "Edit Links" in Excel 2016 today. I tried so many other solutions until I came across this old post. Thank you Excel Forum!