Stop Google Sheets formatting text as URL

Question

When I type "product.name" or "product.id" into a cell, it's auto–formatted as a URL (different colour, underlined, hover shows it as an external link). But it's not a URL, it's plain text.

Similar text like "product.periodLength" isn't converted to a URL.

Based on:

1. How to set a Google Docs Spreadsheet cell format to bare text?
2. How can I stop Google Sheets formatting a Forms response as a date?

I've tried setting the formatting to plain text and using a leading single quote ('), but it doesn't stop the text being formatted as a URL.

Answer 1

I couldn't find an absolute setting to just disable this function. However, you can disable the function from continuing to create links or start creating links in a new document simply by selecting all the cells (Ctrl+A), right-click and select "Unlink" from the options menu. As soon as you do this, Google Sheets saves the change and no hyperlinks will automatically be created. Closing and re-opening does not re-enable the function either.

Answer 2

(Right clicking may not be ideal when you look to automate your sheet...)

Apply method setShowHyperlink(bool) to a range of cells, e.g.

var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheets()[0]
var reportRange = sheet.getRange("A2:E200")
reportRange.setShowHyperlink(false)

See Google documentation - Google Apps Script .

Answer 3

There is now a 'remove link' option -- if you type

foo.com and hit enter

google sheets will create a link to http://foo.com ; most annoying behavior.

you can select a group of cells containing a link , right click, and choose "view more cell actions", followed by "Remove Link".

Answer 4

It is annoying there still does not seem to be a general setting. However, immediately after entering something Sheets turns into a link, if you then press backspace a single time the conversion to link will be undone and you can continue typing.