When you copy text from a website, an email, or another digital document and paste it into Microsoft Word, you frequently import unwanted formatting. One of the most frustrating forms of hidden formatting is embedded hyperlinks. If you are preparing a document for print, drafting a legal contract, or simply trying to create a clean, professional report, having blue, underlined text scattered throughout your paragraphs looks sloppy.
While you can right-click on individual links and select “Remove Hyperlink,” doing this manually across a fifty-page document is an enormous waste of time. Fortunately, Microsoft Word includes a powerful, hidden keyboard shortcut that allows you to strip every single hyperlink from your entire document simultaneously.
Why You Should Remove Unnecessary Hyperlinks
Beyond the distraction of blue text, leaving active hyperlinks in a document can cause several problems. If the document is intended to be printed, the visual indicator of a link is useless to the reader. If the document is being shared digitally, broken or outdated links can confuse the recipient.
Furthermore, when compiling research from multiple sources, standardising the text format is essential for presenting a cohesive final draft. Stripping the links is the first step in regaining control over your document’s formatting.
How to Remove Every Hyperlink Instantly
This method uses a combination of two keyboard shortcuts to select your text and then execute a field-clearing command. It works on both Windows and macOS versions of Microsoft Word.
Step 1: Select the Entire Document
First, you must tell Word which text you want to modify. If you want to remove the links from the entire document, you must highlight everything.
- On Windows: Press Ctrl + A on your keyboard.
- On Mac: Press Command + A on your keyboard.
Your entire document, including all text, images, and tables, should now be highlighted.
Step 2: Execute the Removal Shortcut
With the text highlighted, use the specific keyboard shortcut to remove the hyperlink fields.
- On Windows: Press Ctrl + Shift + F9 simultaneously.
- On Mac: Press Command + 6 (or fn + Command + Shift + F9 on some older keyboards).
Instantly, every hyperlink in the selected text will be converted back to standard, plain text. The blue colour and underlines will vanish, but the actual text of the URLs (if they were written out) will remain intact.
Troubleshooting: When the Shortcut Fails
In rare instances, pressing Ctrl + Shift + F9 might not remove certain links. This usually happens for two reasons.
First, the links might be embedded within a table, a text box, or a header/footer. The “Select All” command (Ctrl + A) does not always grab text inside these specific structural elements. If you notice links remaining inside a table, click inside the table to select it, and then press the removal shortcut again.
Second, on some Windows laptops, the Function keys (F1-F12) are mapped to hardware controls like volume or screen brightness by default. If pressing F9 changes a hardware setting instead of executing the Word command, you will need to hold down the Fn key as well. The revised shortcut would be Ctrl + Shift + Fn + F9.
How to Paste Text Without Links in the Future
To prevent this problem from occurring in the first place, change how you paste text into your documents. Instead of using standard paste (Ctrl + V), use the “Keep Text Only” option.
- Copy the text from your source.
- In Microsoft Word, navigate to the Home tab.
- Click the small down arrow beneath the large Paste button.
- Select the icon that looks like a clipboard with a large letter “A” (Keep Text Only).
This will strip all formatting, including hyperlinks, the moment the text touches your document.