How To Remove Hyperlinks from Microsoft Word Documents

Cassandra McBride With over eight years of experience, Cassandra specializes in editing and technical writing. In her previous role as a technical consultant, Cassandra was responsible for writing user guides, training materials, and other documentation to support the new systems. Read more June 7, 2021

Hyperlinks are clickable links within a document that will take you to a selected web page. Sometimes, Microsoft Word adds clickable links where you don’t want them (i.e., citations). Links may be helpful in some situations, but other times, they can look messy, unprofessional, or unnecessary in a printed document.

Depending on the needs of your document, you can either add or remove the hyperlinks as necessary.

MS Word automatically adds hyperlinks to documents when you enter or copy and paste URLs. You can follow the link by pressing the control button while clicking on it. With so many features and functions, it is challenging to keep up with everything Microsoft Word does. This article shows you how to remove hyperlinks from a document to get on with your work effectively.

Remove Hyperlinks using Word’s Context Menu Options

  1. Right-click on the chosen link in the document, then select “Remove Hyperlink.”
  2. The text/characters will change to the currently set color and become normal text.

Alternatively, you can right-click a link and select “Edit Hyperlink.” That option opens the window shown directly below. Press the Remove Link button on that window and click OK.

Remove All MS Word Hyperlinks using Hotkeys

Hotkeys make it quicker and easier to remove numerous hyperlinks in MS Word, mainly because they delete links in bulk no matter how many your document has. The right-click method in the first process only deletes hyperlinks one by one. Here’s how to use hotkeys to delete MS Word hyperlinks.

If there are many links on multiple pages, it’s better to remove all the hyperlinks with Word’s hotkeys.

Windows users can use these hotkeys:

  1. Press the “Ctrl + A” hotkey to select all the text in the document.
  2. Press the “Ctrl + Shift + F9” hotkey to remove all the links.

Mac users can use these hotkeys:

As with a standard Windows keyboard, press CMD+A to highlight all text within the article. Then use the CMD+fn+Shift+F9 keys and all hyperlinks in the document will be deleted.

  1. Press “CMD + A” to highlight all text within the article.
  2. Press press “CMD + fn + Shift + F9” to delete all hyperlinks at once.

Remove MS Word Hyperlinks From Documents using Macros

The Macro Recorder is a handy tool included in Word that enables recording a sequence of selected options and playing back the macro when required. You can also set up a macro that removes hyperlinks from all open Word documents by manually entering Visual Basic code instead.

First, press the Alt + F11 hotkey to open the Visual Basic editor. Click Insert > Module to open a Module window where you can input macro code. Copy (Ctrl + C) and Paste (Ctrl + V) the code below in Word’s module window.

  1. Press “Alt + F11” to open the Visual Basic editor.
  2. Select “Insert > Module” to open a “Module” window where you can input macro code.
  3. Copy (“Ctrl + C”) and Paste (“Ctrl + V”) the code below in Word’s module window.
Sub ' Loop through all open documents: For Each doc In Application.Documents ' Store the document name szOpenDocName = doc.Name ' Remove the hyperlinks from that document With Documents(szOpenDocName) ' Loop while there are hyperlinks afoot! While .Hyperlinks.Count > 0 .Hyperlinks(1).Delete Wend End With ' Shut this off, don't need anymore popping up Application.Options.AutoFormatAsYouTypeReplaceHyperlinks = False Next doc End SubKillTheHyperlinksInAllOpenDocuments() ' ----------------------------------------------- ' Removes all hyperlinks from any open documents ' Text to display is left intact ' ----------------------------------------------- Dim doc As Document Dim szOpenDocName As String ' Loop through all open documents: For Each doc In Application.Documents ' Store the document name szOpenDocName = doc.Name ' Remove the hyperlinks from that document With Documents(szOpenDocName) ' Loop while there are hyperlinks afoot! While .Hyperlinks.Count > 0 .Hyperlinks(1).Delete Wend End With ' Shut this off, don't need anymore popping up Application.Options.AutoFormatAsYouTypeReplaceHyperlinks = False Next doc End Sub

Once finished with pasting the code above, press the “Ctrl + S” keyboard shortcut to save the macro. To run the macro, select “File > Macro > Macro” and choose “KillTheHyperlinksInAllOpenDocuments.” That will remove all the hyperlinks from open Word documents.

Copying and Pasting Plain Text Hyperlinks

There may be times when you want to paste copied links as plain text, displaying the complete web address.

  1. Copy the website link to Clipboard with the “Ctrl + C” hotkey.
  2. In MS Word, right-click and select “Keep Text Only” from the context menu, but don’t press the “Enter” key after pasting as that reverts the URL to hyperlink format.

Use Third-Party Add-Ons to Paste URLs as Plain Text in MS Word

Third-party add-ons make it easy to paste links as plain text in Microsoft Word documents.

Install Pure Text to Windows 10

Various third-party programs enable you to paste copied text without any formatting. For example, you could add the PureText program to Windows. That converts copied links to unformatted text when you press its “Win key + V” hotkey. You can also paste the text in Word documents by pressing the “Win key + V” keyboard shortcut.

Add Kutools to MS Word

Kutools is one of Word’s best add-ons that adds a whole new toolbar tab to the application. Kutools is retailing at $49 on its website, and there’s also a trial version. This add-on also gives you a quick way to remove all links in a document by clicking “Kutools > More” and then selecting the “Remove Hyperlinks” option. Alternatively, you can also select the “Enterprise” tab and click “Remove“ to erase link formatting from URLs.

How to Switch Off Word’s Automatic Hyperlink Formatting

Word automatically converts URLs to hyperlinks, but you can configure the application so that doesn’t happen.

  1. Select the “File” tab and “Options” to open the Word Options window.
  2. Click “Proofing >AutocorrectOptions“ to open the window shown directly below.
  3. Select the “AutoFormat As You Type” tab.
  4. Uncheck “Internet and network paths with hyperlinks checkbox.”Press the OK buttons on the AutoCorrect and Word Options windows. Now all URLs entered in Word documents will remain plain text.

In closing, there are various ways you can convert links to plain text URLs in Word documents. Word has hotkeys, context menu options, add-ons, and macros that help eliminate hyperlinks in Word docs. You can also remove hyperlinks from Excel spreadsheets.