Non-Printing Hyperlinks

Karen reported a problem she was having getting hyperlinks in a document to print on her home computer. The document would print, but the hyperlinks would simply not be there. The same document would print fine on her system at work, but not on her home system. Both her home and work systems use the same version of Word.

There are a few possible answers to this problem. First, there may be a difference between the printers at work and home. If the home computer uses a color printer, then the hyperlinks may not print because of something as simple as being out of the proper ink color to print the hyperlinks. The same thing may actually print at work because the printer is not out of ink, or the color output is being translated to black and white.

If the ink is OK on the home computer, then check to make sure that the print settings are the same on the home computer as they are on the work computer. You get to the print settings in this manner:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click Display at the left side of the dialog box.
3. Examine the Print section.

If the settings are the same on the home system as they are on the work system, then Word should be creating the print job in a consistent manner across both systems.

Next, check your printer-specific settings to make sure there is nothing there that would affect the printing of either hyperlinks or text that is formatted the same color as your hyperlinks. Display the Print dialog box or printing options (press Ctrl+P) and, with your printer selected at the top of the dialog box, click on the Properties button. You may have to do some exploring in the dialog box, but this is where you control the nitty-gritty of how your printer actually prints what it receives from Word.

Finally, if the hyperlinks are missing from the home computer printout completely—in other words, they are gone and you cannot even tell that they should be there—then the problem is probably related to a style definition and/or a print setting. This gets a bit trickier to explain, though, so bear with me.

Styles affect everything that happens in Word. When you create a hyperlink, Word automatically applies a style to the text that is displayed for the hyperlink. Normally, this style defines that the hyperlink is shown in blue underlined text. You can modify this style as described in this tip:

https://tips.net/T10249

The point is that the style could have been changed so that the hyperlinks are formatted as hidden text. And, if this is the case, then on Karen's home computer the configuration could be such that hidden text is not printed. This is why I mentioned, earlier, to check the print settings—one of those settings is "Print Hidden Text." If this setting is turned off and the style used for hyperlinks specifies that they are formatted as hidden text, then the hyperlinks won't print. They are still there, but they simply won't print. Either make sure that the Hyperlink style isn't formatted as hidden text or ensure that the print settings allow hidden text to be printed, and you should be OK.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11778) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Non-Printing Hyperlinks.