Hyperlinks in Word

Question

I have a word document that was sent to me and if you hover over an area in the table of contents it shows 'ctrl click to follow link' and I would like to remove these but if I right click on the line hyperlink does not come up in the drop down list.  Can you tell me how to find the hyperlink to delete.  If this was copied from another document would it show the hyperlink like that but not actually be there.  If I ctrl click they all take me to the top of the page and no matter where I click all of the table of contents is selected.

Answer 1

Position the I-beam directly left of the first character of the first line of the TOC.

Press Shift+F9.

That will reveal the TOC field settings, which will look something like this:

TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u

Delete the \h part, and press Shift+F9 again.

Then just press F9 and choose to Update the Entire Table.

Answer 2

No. A TOC is always hyperlinked. But the hyperlinks are not formatted like hyperlinks (although the Hyperlink character style is applied, it is suppressed). If you unlink the TOC field (Ctrl+Shift+F9), it will no longer by hyperlinked, but you will also no longer be able to update it.

What is your objection to having the hyperlinks? They do not print and are totally unobvious unless you mouse over them.

Answer 3

Is there a way to remove the hyperlink from the page numbers as well if we did not want it?

Answer 4

Updating the table of contents with F9 (if prompted, be sure to select the option to update the whole table) should fix any incorrect hyperlinks.

Note that removing the \h switch would still leave the page numbers hyperlinked in the TOC.

Answer 5

Thank you.  That worked.