Eliminating Hyperlinks in Excel X for Mac?

December 19, 2007 12:06 PM

Probably ridiculously obvious Excel question: how do I set it so that a URL is never turned into a hyperlink?

It's really as simple as that, I don't want hyperlinks in a spreadsheet ever, I don't ever have a need to click a link in Excel and go to a website. I don't want properly formed URLs that I put into a spreadsheet to turn into hyperlinks at all, but even if it's a sheet by sheet or column by column fix, that's fine, I just can't find out how to do this at all. Oh, I should note that this is using Excel X for Mac.

posted by Dreama to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Four steps:

Select "AutoCorrect Options" from the Tools menu;
Select the tab that says "AutoFormat As You Type";
Uncheck the box that says "Internet and network paths with hyperlinks";
Click OK.
posted by kindachris at 12:13 PM on December 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

There is no "AutoCorrect Options" in the Tools menu...
posted by Dreama at 12:30 PM on December 19, 2007

My mistake. Somehow, I was so excited to actually have an answer to a question, I skipped over the Mac part. heh.

I believe that on the Mac version of Excel, it's just "AutoCorrect..." and the box to uncheck is "Internet paths with hyperlinks." Please forgive me if I'm wrong.
posted by kindachris at 12:42 PM on December 19, 2007

Here you go:

How to prevent hyperlinks in Excel for the Mac
posted by crosten at 12:58 PM on December 19, 2007

Wow, this is ridiculous, I have to create an event handler just to avoid this behavior. Back to Google Docs. Thanks, crosten.
posted by Dreama at 1:17 PM on December 19, 2007

I would just use the single quote to start the cell.
'www.google.com

In my version of excel (2000) it works.

I hope this helps.
posted by fox_terrier_guy at 1:34 PM on December 19, 2007

kindachris, I'm a PC user and was dying to know the answer as well so thanks.
posted by powpow at 7:12 PM on December 19, 2007