Working with hyperlinks

OpenOffice.org 2.x Writer Guide

Chapter 3: Working with Text

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• Selecting text
• Cutting, copying, and pasting text
• Moving paragraphs quickly
• Finding and replacing text and formatting
• Inserting special characters
• Formatting paragraphs
• Formatting characters
• Autoformatting
• Creating numbered or bulleted lists
• Using footnotes and endnotes
• Checking spelling
• Using the thesaurus
• Hyphenating words
• Using AutoCorrect
• Using word completion
• Using AutoText
• Line numbering
• Undoing and redoing changes
• Tracking changes to a document
• Linking to another part of a document
• Working with hyperlinks
• Tips and tricks

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When you type text (such as a website addresses or URL) that can be used as a hyperlink, OOo formats it automatically, creating the hyperlink and applying to the text a color and underlining. If this does not happen, you can enable this feature using Tools > AutoCorrect > Options and selecting the URL Recognition checkbox.

If you do not want OOo to convert a specific URL to a hyperlink, select Edit > Undo Insert from the menu bar or press Control+Z immediately after the formatting has been applied. To change the color of hyperlinks, go to Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Appearance, scroll to Unvisited links and/or Visited links, select the checkboxes, pick the new colors and click OK. Caution: this will change the color for all hyperlinks in all components of OpenOffice.org—this may not be what you want. In Writer and Calc (but not Draw or Impress), you can also change the Internet link character style or define and apply new styles to selected links.

You can also insert and modify links using the Hyperlink dialog. To display the dialog, click the Hyperlink icon File:HyperlinkIcon.png on the Standard toolbar or select Insert > Hyperlink from the menu bar. To turn existing text into a link, highlight it before opening the Hyperlink dialog.

File:Hyperlink-dialog.png

Hyperlink dialog showing details for Internet links.

On the left hand side, select one of the four types of hyperlink:

• Internet: a web address, normally starting with http://
• Mail & News: for example an email address.
• Document: the hyperlink points to another document or to another place in the presentation.
• New document: the hyperlink creates a new document.

The top right part of the dialog changes according to the choice made for the hyperlink type. A full description of all the choices, and their interactions, is beyond the scope of this chapter. Here is a summary of the most common choices used in presentations.

For an Internet type hyperlink, choose the type of hyperlink (choose between Web, FTP or Telnet), and enter the required web address (URL).

For a Mail and News type hyperlink, specify whether it is a mail or news link, the receiver address and for email, also the subject.

For a Document type hyperlink, specify the document path (the Open File button opens a file browser); leave this blank if you want to link to a target in the same presentation. Optionally specify the target in the document (for example a specific slide). Click on the Target icon to open the Navigator where you can select the target, or if you know the name of the target, you can type it into the box.

For a New Document type hyperlink, specify whether to edit the newly created document immediately or just create it (Edit later) and the type of document to create (text, spreadsheet, etc.). For a presentation, Edit now is the more likely choice. The Select path button opens a directory picker.

The Further settings section in the bottom right part of the dialog is common to all the hyperlink types, although some choices are more relevant to some types of links.

• Set the value of Frame to determine how the hyperlink will open. This applies to documents that open in a Web browser.
• Form specifies if the link is to be presented as text or as a button.
• Text specifies the text that will be visible to the user.
• Name is applicable to HTML documents. It specifies text that will be added as a NAME attribute in the HTML code behind the hyperlink.

• Event button: this button will be activated to allow OOo to react to events for which the user has written some code (macro). This function is not covered in this book.

Editing hyperlinks

From OOo 2.3, to edit a hyperlink, you can either click anywhere in the link text, or position the cursor in the link text using the arrow keys, and then open the Hyperlink dialog by clicking the Hyperlink icon on the Standard toolbar or selecting Edit > Hyperlink from the menu bar. (To activate a hyperlink, it is now necessary to hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on the link.)

With OOo 2.2.1 and earlier, clicking on a hyperlink activates the link. Therefore, to edit a link, either move the cursor into the link using the keyboard arrow keys, or change the status of the link by clicking on the acronym HYP (hyperlink) in the Status bar to change it to SEL (select), then open the Hyperlink dialog as described above.

If you need to edit several hyperlinks, you can leave the Hyperlink dialog open until you have edited all of them. Be sure to click Apply after each one. When you are finished, click Close.