Removing phantom external links in Excel

I have an excel spreadsheet with some an external link in that I can't get rid of.

I have read up on the internet quite a lot and Microsoft recommend the following:

• For references in Cells: Using search and replace for [*] to find all references in worksheet cells.


• For references in names: Opening up the name manager and making sure there are no external references there.


• For references in Objects (this is really painful): Select each object individually and look in the formula bar.


• For references in Charts (also painful): Check the formula bar the title and data series for every chart.

This still leaves me with a phantom external reference that I can't find, so I try some more things

• The "Data - Edit Links" feature in Excel followed by clicking on "Break link" (nothing happens)


• Used a "FindLink" plugin (didn't work for me, but was friendly to use)


• Used Microsoft's DeleteLinks plug in (also didn't work and isn't friendly to use)

Answer

In the end I tracked this down to the conditional formatting rules.

Clicking on "Home - Conditional Formatting - Manage Rules" brings up the following dialog, which is relatively easy to look through and replace the external references.