Creating Hyperlinks from E-mail Addresses

Simon asked how he could get a list of his Outlook contacts saved as a Web page, using Word. He used Word's mail-merge feature to extract the Outlook address book into a document, but when he converted the document to a Web page, the e-mail addresses were not "clickable."

The easiest way to convert the actual e-mail addresses to hyperlinks is to use Word's AutoFormat feature. All you need to do is make sure that AutoFormat is correctly configured, and then it will convert all the e-mail addresses to usable links.

Unfortunately, the AutoFormat feature isn't directly accessible in Word—you need to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar. Follow these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Select the Customize option (Word 2007) or Quick Access Toolbar option (Word 2010) at the left side of the dialog box.
3. Using the Choose Commands From drop-down list, choose Commands Not In The Ribbon.
4. Scroll through the list of available commands and choose AutoFormat.
5. Click the Add button. The command is moved to the list at the right of the dialog box.
6. Click OK. The command now appears in the Quick Access Toolbar, to the right of the Office button and just above the ribbon.

To use the AutoFormat feature, follow these steps:

1. Click the AutoFormat tool that you earlier added to the Quick Access toolbar. Word displays the AutoFormat dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The AutoFormat dialog box.

2. Click on the Options button. Word displays the AutoFormat tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The AutoFormat tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box.

3. Make sure that the Internet and Network Paths with Hyperlinks check box is selected.
4. Click on OK to close the AutoCorrect dialog box.
5. Click on OK. Word "autoformats" your document, changing the e-mail addresses to hyperlinks in the process.

If you want to make sure that AutoFormat doesn't change anything else in your document, you can do that by making sure, in step 3, that all check boxes are cleared, except for the Internet and Network Paths with Hyperlinks check box.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11490) applies to Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Creating Hyperlinks from E-mail Addresses.