How to easily find and remove hyperlinks in Excel documents?

Microsoft Office suite offers a lot of productivity features to make our work easier when creating, editing and formatting documents. Hyperlinks in Excel are automatically created when you insert a URL or an email id.

While Excel’s hyperlinks are helpful when you want to open a specific page in your browser, to access a new file in the same spreadsheet or to link to a different spreadsheet in the same workbook, some users find this feature frustrating. If you have multiple hyperlinks, removing them manually could be exhausting.

Today’s article covers:

• How to find all the hyperlinks in Excel
• How to remove all hyperlinks in Excel
• How to turn off automatic hyperlinks in Excel

How to find all the hyperlinks in Excel

To quickly find all the hyperlinks in your spreadsheet or the entire workbook with a list of cells that have it, use the Find and Replace feature.

1. Open your spreadsheet, and click Home.
2. Go to Editing > Find & Select > Replace. (Alternatively, press CTRL + H).
3. Within the Find and Replace dialogue box, click Replace > Options.
4. Click the “Format” button, next to “Find what” text box to open a dropdown list.
5. Select the “Choose Format From Cell” option.
6. Select all the cells that have hyperlinks. This populates the “Preview” pane with the hyperlink format, next to the “Format” button.
7. Click “Find All” to show a list of all the cells with hyperlinks.
8. You can now select each link manually or use the CTRL key to select multiple cells.

How to remove all hyperlinks in Excel

Whether you’ve received a spreadsheet that has unnecessary links or you no longer want the links that you added, there are various ways to remove all the hyperlinks with ease.

Method 1: Delete all hyperlinks by choosing all the cells

1. Select your entire worksheet by clicking the tilted triangle at the top left corner of your spreadsheet. (Or, simply press CTRL + A).
2. Right-click anywhere in your worksheet, and select “Remove Hyperlinks.”
3. This easy step clears all the hyperlinks from your spreadsheet.

Method 2: Remove hyperlinks using Paste Special

1. Select all the cells that you want to unlink. Press and hold the CTRL Key when selecting multiple cells.
2. Right-click within the spreadsheet, and select “Copy.”
3. Now, select a blank cell and right-click on it.
4. Click the “Paste Special” option to open the Paste Special dialogue box.
5. Select the “Values” option, and click OK.
6. This pastes the texts without the hyperlinks.
7. Delete the original cells containing the hyperlinks.

Method 3: Delete hyperlinks using the Find and Replace feature

1. Go to Home > Editing > Find & Replace > Find. Alternatively, press CTRL + F.
2. This opens the Find and Replace dialogue box.
3. Click the “Format” button, to open a dropdown list.
4. Select “Choose Format From Cell.”
5. Select the cell with the hyperlink. This action shows the “Preview” pane with the hyperlink format.
6. Click “Find All” to list all the cells with hyperlinks in Excel.
7. To select all the hyperlinks, press CTRL + A.
8. To select specific hyperlinks, use the CTRL Key.
9. Right-click on the highlighted cells, and click “Remove Hyperlinks.”

Method 4: How to remove hyperlinks with specific text

Suppose you have a dataset of companies which were accidentally linked more than once. Say, you want to remove the hyperlink with the text Company 2, here are the steps to follow:

1. Use shortcut keys CTRL + F to open the Find and Replace dialogue box.
2. Click the “Options” button.
3. Type Company 2 in the “Find what” text box.
4. Select “Choose Format From Cell” from the dropdown menu by clicking the “Format” button.
5. Select the cell with Company 2. This shows the “Preview” pane with the hyperlink format.
6. Now, click “Find All” to display all the hyperlinks associated with Company 2.
7. If you want to erase specific cells with hyperlinks, hold the CTRL Key and click on the hyperlinks you intend to delete.
8. To select all the hyperlinks, press CTRL + A.
9. To remove the selected hyperlinks, right-click on one of the highlighted cells and select “Remove Hyperlinks.”

How to turn off automatic hyperlinks in Excel

If you find it inconvenient for Excel to automatically create hyperlinks, you can turn the hyperlink function off.

1. Open File > Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options.
2. In the AutoCorrect dialogue box, click the “AutoFormat As You Type” tab.
3. Unmark the box next to “Internet and network paths with hyperlinks.”
4. Click OK.

That’s it. Excel will no longer insert links automatically. This change will apply to all your workbooks.

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