Remove multiple hyperlinks in Excel

I was trying to match up claims and payments in my flexible spending account, so I attempted to copy the tables from my benefit company's web site into Excel (I am using version 2003).

The first issue that I ran into was that the cells in the tables would not copy into cells in Excel and the "Text to Columns" function did not work well, even after reformatting the text to a fixed-width font (Courier, in this case). I solved this by first copying the tables into Word and then into Excel. It seems that my browser talks to Word better than it does to Excel.

The second problem was that several of the columns in each table were full of hyperlinks and I accidentally clicked on them several times, which opened my benefits site in a separate browser window each time. I tried reformatting the cells to 'Normal' and I tried using the Paste Special > Values, but neither worked. I succeeded only in changing the font, so they no longer looked like hyperlinks, but I could still click on them.

Fortunately, Microsoft has a solution for this problem right on it's support site. Removing a single hyperlink is easy. Right-click on it and choose Remove Hyperlink from the context menu. However, removing multiple hyperlinks is a completely unconventional and unintuitive process in my opinion.

1. Type the number one (1) into an empty cell.
2. Right-click on the cell and choose Copy from the context menu.
   
3. While holding down the CTRL key, select the cells with the hyperlinks.
   
4. Click Paste Special on the Edit menu, click Multiply in the Operation section and click OK.

Voila, no more hyperlinks. You can also find the solution here.