Word Paste Behavior Not the Same in VBA

Question

I have a document with a number of embedded hyperlinks to convert to plain hyperlinks. Whether they get pasted as clickable URLs or plaintext URLs doesn't matter, as long as it's actually displaying the URL.

For example, I need to change Microsoft Word to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word (either clickable or not).

In Word, if I select the hyperlink, right click, choose "copy hyperlink," then paste special, text only, I get the optimal result (non-clickable URL). If I record VBA code that does the exact same thing, the result is the original embedded link. I've played with various options: turning off smart paste, cut and paste, turning off autoformat of hyperlinks, changing the default paste options, but none of these change my end result.

Sub Replace_w_URLs()
'
' Replace_w_URLs Macro
'
'
Selection.NextField.Select
Selection.Range.Hyperlinks(1).Range.Fields(1).Result.Select
Selection.Copy
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.PasteSpecial Link:=False, DataType:=20, Placement:=wdInLine, _
    DisplayAsIcon:=False

End Sub

Comintern Comintern · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-22T02:27:41

The problem is likely the default behaviour of Word to add a hyperlink if it recognizes that the text you pasted is a URL. If you're doing this in a loop, it does the same thing as if you put the cursor at the end of the URL and hit the space-bar.

The easiest way to avoid this is to just operate on the hyperlink Ranges themselves and just change the text property. When you change HyperLink.Range.Text, it has the side effect of also removing the hyperlink at the same time.

Give this a shot:

Sub Replace_w_URLs()

    Dim url As Range
    Do While Selection.Hyperlinks.Count > 0
        Set url = Hyperlinks(1).Range.Duplicate
        url.Text = Hyperlinks(1).Address
    Loop

End Sub

It should replace all of the hyperlinks in your Selection with the underlying URLs.

Word Paste Behavior Not the Same in VBA

1 Answers