There are 2 types of links in Google Sheets. Auto-generated links that sheets creates itself when you type in URLs, and links created using the HYPERLINK function. How you remove them differs slightly depending on how many links there are, and what type they are.
There are pretty quick shortcuts to get rid of each type, which I’ll detail below.
How to edit or remove a single auto generated link
If you hover your mouse over a cell containing an auto-generated link, you’ll see a pop-up window containing a thumbnail image for the links destination. The top right of this window has a toolbar with 3 icons, the last one is a link icon with a line through it. If you click that icon, sheets will remove the link from the cell.
Here’s a highlighted screenshot of the link remove button in the link pop-up window:
The other 2 buttons in the toolbar of that window allow you to copy the link and edit it.
This is fine for a single cell, but what if you have a whole column of links you need to get rid of?
How to remove multiple auto generated links at the same time
If you have a lot of links to remove, there is an easy way to do this.
- First, you need to select the range of cells with the links for removal
- Then open the context menu by right clicking or using Ctrl+shift+x on Windows, ChromeOS or ⌘+shift+x on Mac.
- Select View more cell actions from the bottom of the menu
- Select Remove link
Hey presto, all the links from all the selected cells are gone!
But what if the links you have to remove came from a formula?
How to remove links created by a formula
If you have a cell that uses the HYPERLINK function in google sheets to create a link, then the only way to remove it is to edit the formula and remove the HYPERLINK function.
There is, however, a really quick way of converting formulas to values for a cell, range of cells, or even an entire sheet. This will leave you with just the data in the cells. If doing that won’t break your sheet, then here’s the quickest way to do it:
- Select the cells with the
HYPERLINKformulas you want to remove. - Copy them using Ctrl+c (⌘+c on Mac)
- Paste values only using Ctrl+Shift+v (⌘+Shift+v on Mac)
