Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 6, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Raghu has a document that has a good number of hyperlinks in it to various Websites. He wants to step through each of the hyperlinks and have them checked, programmatically, to see if they are valid links that don't generate errors.
There is no way to do this automatically in Word, as such functionality is not built into the program. If you only have a few links in the document, you might try saving it as an HTML file. You could then load the file in Internet Explorer and click each link to see if it is valid.
If you are searching for a more automatic method of checking, you would need to create a macro that would step through the links in a document and check them out. The VBA code could end up being rather complex.
Perhaps a better solution, rather than writing your own code, is to use a third-party add-in that can do the checking for you. In searching around, the following add-in was discovered:
https://www.ablebits.com/word-links-checker/
We haven't tried this add-in, but it appears to do everything that Raghu wanted. Perhaps the best news: the add-in is free.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (517) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.
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