How do you remove hyperlinks from a Microsoft Word document? - vba

Question

I'm writing a VB Macro to do some processing of documents for my work.
The lines of text are searched and the bracketed text is put in a list(box).
The problem comes when I want to remove all hyperlinks in the document and then generate new ones (not necessarily in the location of the original hyperlinks)
So the problem is How do I remove the existing hyperlinks?
My current issue is that every time a link gets added, the hyperlinks count goes up one, but when you delete it, the count does NOT reduce. (as a result I now have a document with 32 links - all empty except for 3 I put in myself - they do not show up in the document)
At the end of the code are my attempts at removing the hyperlinks.
Private Sub FindLinksV3_Click()
ListOfLinks.Clear
ListOfLinks.AddItem Now
ListOfLinks.AddItem ("Test String 1")
ListOfLinks.AddItem ActiveDocument.FullName
SentenceCount = ActiveDocument.Sentences.Count
ListOfLinks.AddItem ("Sentence Count:" & SentenceCount)
counter = 0
For Each myobject In ActiveDocument.Sentences ' Iterate through each element.
ListOfLinks.AddItem myobject
counter = counter + 1
BracketStart = (InStr(1, myobject, "("))
If BracketStart > 0 Then
BracketStop = (InStr(1, myobject, ")"))
If BracketStop > 0 Then
ListOfLinks.AddItem Mid$(myobject, BracketStart + 1, BracketStop - BracketStart - 1)
ActiveDocument.Sentences(counter).Select
ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=Selection.Range, Address:= _
"http://testnolink/" & counter, ScreenTip:="" 'TextToDisplay:=""
End If
End If
Next
'ActiveDocument.Sentences(1).Select
'
'Selection.Range.Hyperlinks(1).Delete
ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Item(1).Delete
Debug.Print ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Count
End Sub

Answer 1

This is an old post, so am adding this VBA code in case it is useful to someone.
Hyperlinks (Collections) need to be deleted in reverse order:
Sub RemoveHyperlinksInDoc()
' You need to delete collection members starting from the end going backwards
With ActiveDocument
For i = .Hyperlinks.Count To 1 Step -1
.Hyperlinks(i).Delete
Next
End With
End Sub
Sub RemoveHyperlinksInRange()
' You need to delete collection members starting from the end going backwards
With Selection.Range
For i = .Hyperlinks.Count To 1 Step -1
.Hyperlinks(i).Delete
Next
End With
End Sub

Answer 2

The line removing the hyperlink is commented out. The following line will remove the first hyperlink within the selected range:
Selection.Range.Hyperlinks(1).Delete
This will also decrement Selection.Range.Hyperlinks.Count by 1.
To see how the count of links is changing you can run the following method on a document:
Sub AddAndRemoveHyperlink()
Dim oRange As Range
Set oRange = ActiveDocument.Range
oRange.Collapse wdCollapseStart
oRange.MoveEnd wdCharacter
Debug.Print ActiveDocument.Range.Hyperlinks.Count
ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Add oRange, "http://www.example.com"
Debug.Print ActiveDocument.Range.Hyperlinks.Count
ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Item(1).Delete
Debug.Print ActiveDocument.Range.Hyperlinks.Count
End Sub