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How to Disable / Turn Off Automatic Hyperlinks in Excel

This tutorial demonstrates how to stop Excel from automatically creating hyperlinks.

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Disable Automatic Hyperlinks

By default, Excel recognizes all web addresses you type and turns them into links. For example, if you type www.google.com in a cell, the cell is formatted as a link (underlined, with blue font), redirecting you to your default browser with a click. Let’s type www.automateexcel.com in cell B2 and see what happens.

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Cell B2 is linked to the website, and your text is formatted as a link that will navigate you to the site with a click.

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There’s always the option to remove hyperlinks once they’ve been added. But if you want Excel to display links as regular text by default instead of creating hyperlinks, follow these steps:

  1. In the Ribbon, go to File > Options.

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  1. In Excel Options, go to Proofing, and click AutoCorrect Options…

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  1. In the AutoCorrect window, go to the AutoFormat As You Type tab, uncheck Internet and network paths with hyperlinks, and click OK.

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  1. Now you’re back in the Excel Options window. Click OK to confirm changes.

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  1. Now when you type a web address (www.automateexcel.com) in cell B2, it won’t be formatted as a link. Instead, it’s formatted as text.

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Note: Google Sheets doesn’t have the option to disable automatic hyperlinks, but you can remove all hyperlinks at once in a Google spreadsheet.

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