Have you ever imported data to Excel from an external source with many unwanted hyperlinks that came along?
Also, you might have come across multiple undesired hyperlinks automatically generated by Excel for emails and URLs inserted into a workbook.
Unwanted hyperlinks can cause undue trouble. Every time you select a cell containing a hyperlink, excel would automatically redirect you to the destination link.
Hyperlinks that are not needed can be removed from Excel with sheer ease.
Continue reading to know how you can instantly remove hyperlinks in Excel.
Remove Hyperlink in Excel
To better learn the easy two-step process of removing hyperlinks from selected cells in Excel, let’s stipulate an example below.
Remove hyperlinks from selected cells
The data set below collates different links containing information relevant to various topics. As soon as the links are input, Excel recognizes them as hyperlinks and formats them into blue color and underlines them.
To remove the hyperlinks from only some selected cells, here are the steps that you need to follow.
Step 1:
Select the cells containing the hyperlinks that you want to be removed.
Step 2:
Right-click by keeping the cursor on the selected cells to see the pop-up menu as below.
From the pop-up menu that opens up, select the option, ‘Remove Hyperlinks’.
Excel removes hyperlinks from the selected cells as evident below.
That is it. Removing hyperlinks from Excel is only that easy.
However, what if you have an Excel file that is densely packed with hyperlinks? Is it not hectic to select each cell to remove the hyperlink therefrom? It definitely is. Here is a shortcut that may help you with it.
Remove all hyperlinks together
Continuing with the same example stipulated above, to remove hyperlinks from the entire spreadsheet at the same time, follow the steps below.
Step 1:
Press ‘Ctrl+A’. This is the shortcut to select all the contents of an active sheet.
Step 2:
Right-click against the selected cells to have the pop-up menu opened. Opt for ‘Remove Hyperlinks’ as follows.
Excel removes hyperlinks from the entire spreadsheet as follows.
Pro Tip: Prevention of Automatic Navigation to the Destination Link As soon as you select a cell that contains a hyperlink, you will be navigated to the destination link. Or in case of an email address, Excel would present you with the option to send an email to the subject address. If Excel redirects you to the destination link automatically upon selecting a cell, you may turn it off as follows. File > Options > Advanced > Editing options Check the option for 'Use CTRL + Click to follow hyperlink'. Once this is done, Excel would present you with the option to press ‘Ctrl’ to follow a link. Merely selecting a cell in Excel wouldn’t navigate you to the destination page.
Suggested Tutorial: How to Extract URL from Hyperlinks in Excel
Put Off Automatic Hyperlinks in Excel
It is often the case that you’ve to work with Excel files containing excessive Hyperlinks. For example, the Human Resource department of a Company may have to maintain a record for all of its employees, including their names, numbers, and email addresses.
Whenever fed into Excel, email addresses are recognized by Excel as hyperlinks. If you don’t want the file to contain hyperlinks, such settings of Excel might prove problematic. This is because every time you feed the details of a new employee into the Excel sheet, Excel would automatically turn the email address into a hyperlink.
Removing each hyperlink time and time again is time-consuming and frustrating. To prevent Excel from generating hyperlinks automatically, you can disable the same from the settings. Here’s how you can do it.
Step 1:
Go to File > Options as follows.
Step 2:
Selecting options would open up a window of Excel options as follows.
From the said window, choose Proofing > AutoCorrect Options as highlighted above. This would open up a pop-up window.
Choose ‘AutoFormat as you type’ and uncheck the box for ‘Internet and network paths with hyperlinks’ as highlighted below.
This will turn off the automatic hyperlinking within Excel. Now, as you type or Copy / Paste links in Excel, those would remain as text, and Excel would not automatically turn them into Hyperlinks.
Pro tip: This setting will be applied to the entire Excel application. Any workbook that you create or edit with Excel will have the same settings applied. However, after these settings are applied, you can still add hyperlinks to one or more cells by right-clicking on the desired cell. From the pop-up menu that then opens up, select ‘Link’. This would open up a dialogue box where you can insert the destination link to be added as hyperlink to that cell.
Conclusion:
Hyperlinks make an intelligent feature of Excel. However, undesired hyperlinks are often a nuisance. Hope this article helped you learn all that you needed to know how to remove hyperlinks in Excel.