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General discussion

Excel 2000: Entering E-Mail Addresses WITHOUT hyperlinks

Nov 17, 2004 12:45AM PST

Simple question it would seem, but of course the MS Excel Help system is of no use. How do I tell Excel NOT to automatically hyperlink e-mail addresses? I've got someone working on a spreadsheet, and he doesn't have e-mail. So every time he inadvertently clicks a cell containing an e-mail address, he gets a slew of error messages.

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Re: Excel 2000: Entering E-Mail Addresses WITHOUT hyperlinks
Nov 17, 2004 12:51AM PST
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Re: Excel 2000: Entering E-Mail Addresses WITHOUT hyperlinks
Nov 17, 2004 1:17AM PST

Hi Bob:

Looks like you can choose formatting options in later versions of Excel but not in Excel 2000. The best workaround seems to be to enter the data with an apostrophe at the beginning, e.g. 'josh@cnet.com.

Not the ideal solution but it will do. Thanks.

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Re: Excel 2000: Entering E-Mail Addresses WITHOUT hyperlinks
Nov 17, 2004 5:19AM PST

Josh,

Looks like earlier versions of Excel (tried it with Excel 97) doesn't even make a hyperlink. I can enter an email-address in a A1 in a new spreadsheet, and it just stays text. But there might be issues with Excel 97 under Windows XP (although that depends on what you do with the program).

Word 97 can make hyperlinks automatically, in Excel 97 it can only be done with a menu option. It seems Microsoft was a little bit too enthousiastic in Excel 2000 and corrected this in higher versions again. So you've got just the wrong version for your needs.

Try another version or MS Excel of download Openoffice, I should say. Or, indeed, use the apostrophe to force a text-format.

Kees

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Re: Excel 2000: Entering E-Mail Addresses WITHOUT hyperlinks
Nov 17, 2004 10:40PM PST

Josh - in the edit menu, select go to, enter the cell reference, then go to the insert menu, select hyperlink and select remove hyperlink in the dialogue box. I found no way to convert a column of hyperlinked information. I had to go to each cell to remove the links one by one.

The only other way when entering an email address that I can think of is not to use the @ character, try another character or spaces between the address and isp. Khemosabe

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Re: Excel 2000: Entering E-Mail Addresses WITHOUT hyperlinks
Nov 18, 2004 4:24AM PST

Go to Tools, Options, Spelling, AutoCorrect Options, AutoFormat As You Type, then remove the check from Internet and network paths with hyperlinks, click OK, and click OK again. Then you're done.

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Re: Excel 2000: Entering E-Mail Addresses WITHOUT hyperlinks
Nov 18, 2004 10:06PM PST

That works for Excel XP and 2003, but not Excel 2000. I guess it took them a version to realize that people might want to make their own choices.

The apostrophe workaround will work for me. Thanks all.