Science Teaching Series

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II. Developing Scientific Reasoning

III. Developing Scientific Understanding

IV. Developing Scientific Problem Solving

V. Developing Scientific Research Skills

VI. Resources for Teaching Science

Removing Hyperlinks

(Source of this information)

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:

A. Microsoft Word

  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: 
    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)

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: 

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”.

B. Microsoft Excel

  1. Same process as a MS Word document. From Excel, fire up the VB editor (ALT F11).
  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: 
    Sub RemoveHyperLinksGLobally()
    Dim i As Integer
    For i = ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks.Count To 1 Step -1
          ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks(i).Delete
    Next i
End Sub

  4. The only difference from the code for MS Word is highlighted in green. ActiveSheet, instead of ActiveDocument.
  5. Now, from the FILE menu, select “CLOSE AND RETURN TO MICROSOFT EXCEL”.
  6. When back into your Excel document, now just press ALT F8 to bring up the MACROS selection window (or you can always do TOOLS —> MACRO —> MACROS) and select the right macro. Bingo.

However, since we only work with the “ActiveSheet” in the above example, we remove the hyperlinks only from the single active sheet that is currently on the screen. To remove all the hyperlinks from all the worksheets in an Excel document, this code is handy: 

Sub RemoveHyperLinksGLoballyFromAllWorksheets()
    Dim i As Integer, wSheet As Worksheet
    For Each wSheet In Worksheets
        For i = wSheet.Hyperlinks.Count To 1 Step -1
          wSheet.Hyperlinks(i).Delete
        Next i
    Next wSheet
End Sub