How do I convert a column of text URLs into active hyperlinks in Excel?

Question

I have a column in excel, wherein I have all the website url values. My question is I want to turn the url values to active links. There are about 200 entries in that column

Answer 1

1. Create a temporary new column of hyperlinks using formula =HYPERLINK()
2. Copy that column into Microsoft Word (copy to clipboard only after Word is running).
3. Copy everything in the new word document (ctrl+a, then ctrl+c).
4. Paste into Excel, replacing the original column of text. Delete the temporary column with the formula.

Answer 2

If you don't want to make a macro and as long as you don't mind an additional column, then just create a new column alongside your column of URLs.

In the new column type in the formula =HYPERLINK(A1) (replacing A1 with whatever cell you are interested in). Then copy the formula down the rest of the 200 entries.

NOTE: This solution does not work if the cell A1 contains a string longer than 255 characters. It results in a #VALUE! error

Answer 3

If you copy the text contents into a new column and use:

=HYPERLINK("http://"&B10,B10) 

on your original column. Then use the $ for the column so it looks like this:

=HYPERLINK("http://"&$B10,$B10)

That's the only way it worked for me on Excel 2010 on Windows 7. You can copy down the formula.

Answer 4

Here's a way I found. I'm on a Mac using Excel 2011. If column B had the text values you want to be hyperlinks, put this formula in the cell C1 (or D1 or whatever as long as it's a free column): =HYPERLINK(B1,B1) This will insert a hyperlink with the location as the link text and the "friendly name" as the link text. If you have another column that has a friendly name for each link, you could use that too. Then, you could hide the text column if you didn't want to see it.

If you have a list of IDs of something, and the urls were all http://website.com/folder/ID, such as:

A1  | B1
101 | http://website.com/folder/101
102 | http://website.com/folder/102
103 | http://website.com/folder/103
104 | http://website.com/folder/104

you could use something like =HYPERLINK("http://website.com/folder/"&A1,A1) and you wouldn't need the list of urls. That was my situation and worked nicely.

According to this post: http://excelhints.com/2007/06/12/hyperlink-formula-in-excel/ this method will work in Excel 2007 as well.

Answer 5

If adding an extra column with the hyperlinks is not an option, the alternative is to use an external editor to enclose your hyperlink into =hyperlink(" and "), in order to obtain =hyperlink("originalCellContent")

If you have Notepad++, this is a recipe you can use to perform this operation semi-automatically:

• Copy the column of addresses to Notepad++
• Keeping ALT-SHIFT pressed, extended your cursor from the top left corner to the bottom left corner, and type =hyperlink(". This adds =hyperlink(" at the beginning of each entry.
• Open "Replace" menu (Ctrl-H), activate regular expressions (ALT-G), and replace $ (end of line) with "\). This adds a closed quote and a closed parenthesis (which needs to be escaped with \ when regular expressions are activated) at the end of each line.
• Paste back the data in Excel. In practice, just copy the data and select the first cell of the column where you want the data to end up.

Answer 6

For anyone landing here with Excel 2016, you can simply highlight the column, then click the Hyperlink tab located on the Home ribbon in the Styles box.

Edit: Unfortunately, this only updates the cell style, not the function.