drag and drop files onto cells for hyperlinking?

Hi everybody,

I've been told at work to do a very tedious task. I have a series of items (300) and I must hyperlink each of them to a file ( a jpg, a descriptive picture of the item) located in the company server. Having to go through the Excel right-click menu for attaching each of this 300 files is exhausting. And drag&dropping the file from the windows explorer onto a cell doesnt seem to work for this purpose...isn't there a way ( via Macro?) to implement a drag&drop solution?

It's not so easy like writing a list of file-routes and associate it with my list of items, since I firstly must identify visually the item in the picture, and then link it with the file . Drag&drop is the best solution.

I use Excel 2010.

Thanks for your answers and suggestions in advance!

A macro can add the hyperlink but it can't look at the picture

If you can be more specific about what you would like the workflow to look like I can probably help with a macro. What does your Excel file look like? A list of part descriptions? Would it be helpful to click a button and get a list of jpg files that haven't been linked yet to choose from? Maybe a File Open dialog box where you can see thumbnails of the jpg's and select one?

Can you describe how you would like this to work, and any limitations or constraints? I want to avoid a series of "Try this...", "No, because..." posts.

Originally Posted by 6StringJazzer

A macro can add the hyperlink but it can't look at the picture

If you can be more specific about what you would like the workflow to look like I can probably help with a macro. What does your Excel file look like? A list of part descriptions? Would it be helpful to click a button and get a list of jpg files that haven't been linked yet to choose from? Maybe a File Open dialog box where you can see thumbnails of the jpg's and select one?

Can you describe how you would like this to work, and any limitations or constraints? I want to avoid a series of "Try this...", "No, because..." posts.

Thanks a lot for your interest StringJazzer. I´ll try to provide more specific information with the next example:

I have 300 pictures stored within several folders in the company´s server. Each of those are named like IMG_23, IMG_24, IMG_25, ....( I´m not allowed to modify these tags nor the folders´ names)

In each of those images, I have one or several items ( electronic components with its corresponding badge names)

For example in picture IMG_23, I can see 3 of those components with its correspondent badge names (tags) like:

-F112
-Q26
-H23

Now let´s get back to my excel list. I must build a database over an excel book. I have 300 inputs in my list, this is, 300 hundred of those components. Example:
...
-F112 | info A about this item | info B... | info C... | hyperlink to the jpg file in which this item appears| ....|...other cells|
-Q26 | info A about this item | info B... | info C... | hyperlink to the jpg file in which this item appears| ....|...other cells|
-H23 | info A about this item | info B... | info C... | hyperlink to the jpg file in which this item appears| ....|...other cells|
....

So what do I have to do? I must look up every of those 300 items, let´s say for example, the item X112, across all the group of pictures files (to make this example easier, let say that the item appears only in a pictutre. In reality it may appear in several of them). And when I find it, I must create in the correspondent cell, the hyperlink to the jpg where I found it.

I work with two computer screens, so this all would be a quicker task if in one screen I open a window with the folder where I have the jpg´s ( I set the view mode like "big icons" in windows 7, which is really helpful). On the other screen I have my excel list.
What it would be a saving-time solution, is to drag the jpg file and drop it onto a cell, and while doing so, creating automatically the hyperlink...

So, is this possible via Macros?
Or if you have any other idea...

Thanks again for your attention

Just occurred to me, the macro assumes that everything in the folder is an image file, which of course may not be true. Let me know if you need any tweaks.

You can hyperlink to a specific location in another Microsoft Office document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) but I don't think it's possible to do that for a PDF file. If it is possible, I'm not the guy who can tell you, sorry!