Once a month I need to update a dozen or so files that contain around 500 or
so external links. For reasons I cannot go into, I cannot simply use the
Edit-Links-Change_Source solution. Instead I have to use the "find & replace"
function.

As long as I have not made any filename typos in the "find & replace" query,
this works fine. But as the filenames are complex, occasional typos are
inevitable. In such cases, a dialog box appears prompting to either locate
the non-existent file, or to cancel.

The problem is that with 500 links, I appear to be forced to click the
"cancel" button 500 times in order to then be able to "undo" and correct the
filename in the "find & replace" command. The only way I seem to be able to
avoid this laborious is to kill the Excel application/process using Task
Manager. Of course this means that any other unsaved Excel files that I have
open are also killed.

As the Esc key doesn't seem to work, is there a more efficient way of
halting the bad "find & replace" order from continuing?