Deleting all hyperlinks from a Microsoft Word document

Tired of getting Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) that are chock-full of hyperlinks that are bright blue and easy to accidentally click, making Word goes berserk and open the link?

You can easily remove all those pesky URLs with a simple macro to remove all the hyperlinks in a document in one full swoop. With macros available to you in one keystroke (Alt F8) this is quite a convenient way of managing your logic ACROSS all Office software — the basic logic remains the same. Let's see some code now:

1. From a Word document, press ALT F11 to open the MS Visual Basic.
2. The Visual Basic interface will open up. From the INSERT menu, click on MODULE to add a module.
3. A new document opens up. In there, paste the following code:

Code:

      Sub RemoveHyperLinksGLobally()
           Dim i As Integer
           For i = ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Count To 1 Step -1
                 ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks(i).Delete
           Next i
       End Sub

4. Press CTRL S to save this module.
5. Now, from the FILE menu, select "CLOSE AND RETURN TO MICROSOFT WORD".
6. When back into your Word document, now just press ALT F8 to bring up the MACROS selection window (or you can always do TOOLS —> MACRO —> MACROS)

Our macro is added.
Not to worry, this does not delete the text, it just converts the hyperlink fields to plain text. However, if your original hyperlink had some formatting and you don't want to lose that formatting for the text, but just want to get rid of the underlying URL, here's some handy code for that too:

Code:

Sub RemoveHyperLinksGLoballyButPreserveCharacterStyle()
     Dim i As Long, myRange As Range
     For i = ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Count To 1 Step -1
         With ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks(i)
             Set myRange = .Range
             .Delete
             myRange.Style = wdStyleHyperlink
         End With
     Next i
 End Sub

TIP: Microsoft Word also has the "function" to auto-convert any text you type, that looks like a URL, into a hyperlinked URL. If you want to prevent this, select TOOLS —> AUTOCORRECT —> AUTOFORMAT AS YOU TYPE, and under "Replace as you type", turn off "Internet and network paths with hyperlinks".