Network resources being called when no connections are configured

Question

Some users were reporting awful performance in Excel 2010 when doing simple things like clicking a cell or changing sheets for many workbooks they use.

I made sure there were no dead connections configured, and none were.

I finally got to fire up Process Monitor only to find out that after reproducing the freeze issue, indeed, Excel is trying to reach an old server we have decommissioned (that file server used to host the workbooks themselves).

Here's what it had to say:

Notice the 18 second delay between the last RegOpenKey operation and the first CreateFile operation. Excel is indeed calling a non-existent server, but as I said, there are no "Connections" configured in the workbook.

Any ideas where Excel is storing that old server name?

Answer 1

Turns out those were "Name links" you can see by hitting Ctrl-F3 instead of Data->Connections menu. I deleted all those who were referring to the old network resource, and they now run fine.