Have you run into a new error message related to external references in your document?

We are here to provide some helpful tips to assist in locating the hyperlink as these errors are often tricky to address as they do not provide a direct link to the source of the issue.

You may encounter SEC critical filing errors related to EFM 5.02.05  in your iXBRL generation if your filing has a hyperlink with an unsupported destination. These errors are most often related to external hyperlinks with destinations outside of previously filed exhibits on the SEC website. A common mistake here is when a hyperlink is created directly to the interactive data (SEC iXBRL Viewer) within the filing rather than directly to the SEC website. Filings including hyperlinks with unsupported destinations will return an error for “Unsupported external reference”. 

In order to locate the specific hyperlink causing the error, you will need to select the View Details option from the dropdown menu in the upper right corner of the message.

Within the details, you will find the specific link that is causing the error, which you can highlight and copy the text string in order to be able to search the filing documents for the location.

Once you have the external reference information copied, navigate to the XBRL Generations panel on the right side of the screen and click to preview the Filing Documents 

With the Filing Document Preview open: 

1. Press CTRL+SHIFT+I to open up a new panel to inspect your document, or right-click on the scroll bar and select 'Inspect’. 
2. Click the Elements tab of the top/left pane as shown below and within that tab, CTRL+F (or Cmd+F on Mac) to launch the “Find” box within that panel.
3. In the “Find” box, paste the hyperlink information from the error message to search for the location in the document.

This will show you the location of the hyperlink in the document. From there, you can navigate to that hyperlink and remove it and/or replace it with a supported external reference.

If the link is intended to go to a prior SEC filing, the trick is to copy the link address before you click on it: 

***If you previously copied the link after you clicked on it to open the filed document, check to make sure that the link address does not have “ixviewer/ix.html?” in the address as this is not supported by the SEC. It should only have “ix?” included in the link. You can replace by copying the link address from the image above.

Once the hyperlink is removed or replaced with the SEC acceptable link, the related XBRL errors should resolve.

Additional Resources

For additional information on setting up the exhibit indexes with related hyperlinks to be in accordance with SEC requirements, visit  the Support Center article for Hyperlinking the exhibit index.