Pasted URLs Don’t Become Hyperlinks
October 27, 2023 - by Bill Jelen
![Pasted URLs Don’t Become Hyperlinks Pasted URLs Don’t Become Hyperlinks](/img/excel-tips/2023/10/pasted-urls-don-t-become-hyperlinks.jpg)
Problem: I pasted hundreds of web site addresses into Excel. They did not turn into hyperlinks. I found that I could select a cell, press F2, then Enter to make the hyperlink. But I don’t want to have to do that hundreds of times.
![Five URLs, entered in A1:A5. None are "hot" - they are all just text and are not clickable.](/img/content/2023/10/LE10001283.jpg)
Strategy: Use the =HYPERLINK()
function. Insert a blank column near your data. Use =HYPERLINK(A1,A1)
.
![In cell B1, use =HYPERLINK(A1,A1) to create a hyperlink. The first argument is Link Location. The second argument is Friendly Name.](/img/content/2023/10/LE10001284.jpg)
Enter the formula and copy it down to all rows.
![From the plain text in A, you now have live hyperlinks in B.](/img/content/2023/10/LE10001285.jpg)
Hide column A, leaving column B intact.
Gotcha: This strategy works great for web addresses that have the leading http://. It will not work for cell A5. A hyperlink will appear, but when someone follows the hyperlink, it will say the address is invalid. In that case, you could use this formula: =HYPERLINK(“http://”&A5,A5)
.
This article is an excerpt from Power Excel With MrExcel
Title photo by Patrick Federi on Unsplash