Excel's HYPERLINK Function Not Working 😕

The HYPERLINK function has been broken for as long as the dynamic array engine has been around.

I’ll tell you why…

I tried the exact same example in the Windows, macOS, and web versions of Excel — and got three different results.

𝗘𝗫𝗔𝗠𝗣𝗟𝗘

"Apple", "Google", and "Microsoft" are featured in A2:A4 with their corresponding URLs in B2:B4.

To return the hyperlinks as friendly names, forget about using =HYPERLINK(B2:B4,A2:A4), as that repeats the first value for the entire spilled range (e.g. "Apple";"Apple";"Apple").

You really have to go out of your way to correct it:

=
MAP(B2:B4,
A2:A4,
LAMBDA(url,website,HYPERLINK(url,website))
)

However, even then, how this formula performs varies depending on the platform you’re using.

I hovered over each result in A6:A8, and here’s what happened:

𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗗𝗢𝗪𝗦
A tooltip appeared with Apple’s website in it, even for Google’s and Microsoft’s.

𝗠𝗔𝗖𝗢𝗦
Absolutely nothing. The hyperlinks didn't even work.

𝗪𝗘𝗕
Each website name displayed a pop-up containing the correct URL.

Strange, eh?

Excel for the web was the only platform to successfully do what I wanted, but it still has the spill issue the others are affected by, meaning I couldn’t use HYPERLINK on its own.

This isn’t exactly a difficult bug to find. I’ve brought it up a few times since 2023, but nothing’s ever been done about it.

Too busy prioritising Copilot, I guess…

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