Stopping Smart Tags from Being Saved

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated April 23, 2016)

Smart Tags were developed by Microsoft as a way for companies or individuals to mark certain words so they lead to additional information. For instance, a person's name or a company name or some other proper noun could become a Smart Tag. If so, it appears on-screen with a wavy purple underline that indicates the word (or phrase) can be clicked for more information. In some ways, a Smart Tag is similar to a hyperlink.

You can turn off Smart Tags, so they are not saved with a document, by following these steps:

Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
Display the Save tab. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Save tab of the Options dialog box.

Clear the Embed Smart Tags check box.
Click OK.

Now you can save your document as you normally would. The setting is stored with the document, and Smart Tags won't be saved with this particular document unless you go back and explicitly change the setting.

If you want the saving of Smart Tags turned off for all your documents, you need to open the templates you use to create documents, and then perform the steps just listed. For instance, load the Normal.dot template and perform the four steps. Save the template, and then the setting will be turned off for any future documents you create that are based on Normal.dot. Existing documents, even though they may be based on Normal.dot, will need to be individually changed. If you prefer, you can create a small macro that will turn the option off for you:

Sub OptSmartTagsOff()
    ActiveDocument.EmbedSmartTags = False
End Sub

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7832) applies to Microsoft Word 2002 and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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