Copying and pasting research from Wikipedia, news articles, or internal company wikis into a Google Doc is a standard part of the writing process. Unfortunately, when you paste this text, Google Docs perfectly preserves every single embedded hyperlink. If you paste a massive 10-page report, you might end up with hundreds of distracting blue, underlined words scattered throughout your document.
If you right-click on a link, you will see a small “Remove link” icon, but clicking that icon 300 times manually is an agonizing waste of time. Surprisingly, Google Docs does not have a native “Remove All Hyperlinks” button in its top toolbar. However, you can achieve this exact result instantly by utilizing a clever workaround involving the formatting engine.
The Scenario
You have a massive document filled with dozens of blue hyperlinks. You want to strip the URLs from the text, returning the words to standard, unclickable black text, without deleting the actual words themselves.
Step 1: Select the Entire Document
Before applying the formatting scrub, you need to highlight all the text.
- Click anywhere inside your document.
- Press Ctrl + A (on Windows) or Cmd + A (on Mac) to select every single paragraph and page. The entire document should now be highlighted in light blue.
Step 2: Copy the Selected Text
We are going to move the text temporarily to the clipboard.
- Press Ctrl + C (Windows) or Cmd + C (Mac).
Step 3: Paste Without Formatting
This is the secret. Google Docs has a special pasting function that forcefully strips away all HTML attributes—including bolding, italics, font colors, and crucially, hyperlinks—leaving only the raw, plaintext characters.
- With the entire document still highlighted, you are going to paste the text directly over itself.
- Press Ctrl + Shift + V (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + V (Mac). Alternatively, you can click Edit in the top menu and select Paste without formatting.
The Immediate Result
Your document will instantly refresh. Every single hyperlink is permanently gone. The blue text is black, the underlines have vanished, and the words are completely unclickable.
Important Caveat: Restoring Headers and Bold Text
The “Paste without formatting” trick is incredibly fast, but it is a blunt instrument. While it perfectly eradicates every hyperlink, it also eradicates your bold text, italicized words, and Header sizings (turning H1s and H2s into standard body text).
If your document relies heavily on complex formatting that you cannot afford to lose, there is a slightly slower, but more surgical alternative:
- Highlight the specific paragraph that contains the links.
- Press Ctrl + K (or Cmd + K). This opens the hyperlink editor dialogue box for all the links in the highlighted area.
- While the box is open, do not type anything. Simply press the Escape (Esc) key on your keyboard.
In many modern builds of Google Docs, pressing Esc while bulk-editing links will sever the URLs while perfectly preserving your bold and italic text formatting.