Deleting a Hyperlink

Part of Excel's compatibility with the Web is to allow you to define hyperlinks in your workbooks. There may come a time when you no longer need a particular hyperlink. Fortunately, deleting a hyperlink in Excel is very easy to do. All you need to do is follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the hyperlink. Excel displays a Context menu.
2. Choose the Hyperlink option from the Context menu. Excel displays a submenu.
3. Choose Remove Hyperlink from the submenu. Excel dutifully removes the hyperlink.

You should note that in some versions of Excel (such Excel 2003 and Excel 2007) there is a Remove Hyperlink option directly on the Context menu displayed in step 1. If this is the case, consider yourself fortunate--you can directly remove the hyperlink without the extra steps.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can get rid of a hyperlink simply by clearing a cell (moving to the cell and pressing Del). You can do this in the newer versions of Excel, but you cannot in the older versions. If you do this, the hyperlink text is gone, but the hyperlink itself is still lurking in the background. If you type some information in the cell again, you will notice it is underlined, indicating it is still a hyperlink. The reason for this is because Excel considers the hyperlink to be a format of the cell. Pressing Del only clears the contents of the cell, not its format. You can use other editing techniques to get rid of a hyperlink, however, provided those techniques result in getting rid of formatting or overwriting the formatting.