The Problem with Automatic Hyperlinks
When you type a website URL or an email address into a Microsoft Word document and press the spacebar or Enter key, Word automatically converts the text into a clickable, blue, underlined hyperlink. While this is helpful for digital documents, it can ruin the formatting of printed reports, academic papers, and professional letters where clean, unstyled text is required. Manually right-clicking and removing these links every time you type an address is inefficient.
Disabling Automatic Hyperlinks in Microsoft Word
You can turn off this behaviour entirely by modifying Word’s AutoFormat settings.
1. Open Microsoft Word.
2. Click on the File tab in the top-left corner, then click Options at the bottom of the left-hand menu.
3. In the Word Options dialog box, select Proofing from the left-hand menu.
4. Click the AutoCorrect Options… button on the right.
5. A new window will appear. Click the AutoFormat As You Type tab at the top.
6. Under the “Replace as you type” section, untick the box labelled Internet and network paths with hyperlinks.
7. Click OK to close the AutoCorrect window, and then click OK again to close Word Options.
Removing Existing Hyperlinks Quickly
Disabling the feature will prevent Word from creating new hyperlinks, but it will not remove the links you have already typed into your document. If you have a document littered with unwanted hyperlinks, you do not need to delete them individually.
To remove all existing hyperlinks at once, press Ctrl + A on your keyboard to highlight the entire document. Once everything is selected, press Ctrl + Shift + F9. This command instantly strips the hyperlink formatting from the text, returning all web addresses to normal, unlinked text.