Inserting links in a document

A link is a piece of text, graphic, picture, chart, or shape in a document that, when clicked on, will take the user to another location! An example would be to use a link to go to a website or file from the document. Links can be used to link to other files, to external documents, to a place in the same document, or to web pages or graphics. This section will take you through a few methods you can use to insert links into Word 2019 documents. Let's go over the first method and open the document called Hyperlinks.docx:

1. Select some text or position the mouse pointer in the document where you would like to place the link.
2. Right-click and choose Link….

Alternatively, you can do the following:

1. Click on the Insert tab.
2. Choose the Links icon.
3. The Insert Link dialog box will populate.
4. Under the Link to: text at the left top of the dialog box and make sure Existing File or Web Page is selected.
5. Type the link address into the space provided in the Address: placeholder.
6. Click on OK to complete the link.
7. In the document, you will notice that the text you selected in now formatted differently. This is because it has been identified as a link. To launch the link, hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard, and with the Ctrl key depressed, click once with the mouse. The browser will open with the relevant website.
8. To visit the link, position the mouse pointer over the linked text. Hold down the Ctrl key and click once with the mouse pointer. The mouse pointer will change to a hand icon to indicate that you are launching a link:

This procedure is pretty much the same for all types of links you wish to create in a document. You can create a link from an image or shape in a Word document. A Screen Tip... for the link can be added via the Text to display: heading at the top of the dialog. The text that's entered here will be displayed in the document instead of the entire hyperlink code and gives the user direction as to what the link might contain. This can be used as a marketing tool too.

Linking to a separate file is a popular feature as you can distribute a report in Word 2019, including a link, for example, to an Excel file to explain a certain part of the report or include links to separate documents as part of an agenda.

When visiting the Insert Link dialog box, you will notice the Place in This Document option under the Link to heading on the left-hand side. This option is wonderful when working with long documents. If you have a list of headings at the top of a document and need to read additional content for one of the topics, which is located on page 101 of the document, you will need to scroll to get there, which is not ideal. Once set up, you can click on the linked heading, which will immediately take you to the topic's location in the document:

To edit a link, simply right-click on the link's text and choose Edit Link:

To remove the link, follow these steps:

1. Select the text that contains the hyperlink you wish to remove.
2. Right-click and choose Remove Hyperlink from the shortcut menu.

This way, the hyperlink will be removed from the text.