Extract URLs from Word Documents

A step-by-step guide to extract all hyperlinks from Microsoft Word documents using URL Extractor, including large reports and messy formatting.

1/10/2024

Extract URLs from Word Documents


Microsoft Word documents often contain a surprising number of links: references, footnotes, internal navigation, email addresses, and more. When you only need the URLs, scrolling through pages and clicking every blue underline is slow and easy to get wrong.


This guide explains how to extract URLs from Word documents using URL Extractor. You copy once, paste once, click GET URL, and then work with all links in a single list.


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Quick steps


  • In Word, select the content you care about.
  • Copy with `Ctrl + C` / `Cmd + C`.
  • Paste into URL Extractor.
  • Click GET URL to extract all links.
  • Delete internal or local‑only links, then Copy All or Open All.

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    1. Understand what you are extracting


    Before starting, take a quick look through your document and note what kinds of links it contains:


  • External web URLs (documentation, articles, tools, or references).
  • Email addresses (for example, author contact details).
  • File links (shared drive documents, internal PDFs, and so on).
  • Internal navigation links (for example, table of contents entries).

    • URL Extractor will treat all of these as links. You can later decide which ones to keep and which ones to delete from the final list.


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    2. Method 1 – Extract from the whole document


    For small to medium documents, the easiest approach is to process everything in one go.


  • Open the document in Microsoft Word.
  • Press `Ctrl + A` (or `Cmd + A` on macOS) to select all content.
  • Press `Ctrl + C` / `Cmd + C` to copy.
  • Open URL Extractor in your browser.
  • Click inside the “Paste Your Content” area.
  • Paste with `Ctrl + V` / `Cmd + V`.
  • Click GET URL.

    • Within a few seconds, URL Extractor will scan the pasted content and show you a list of links.


    This method works well for:


  • Short reports and proposals.
  • Blog post drafts or articles you wrote in Word.
  • Documents of up to a few dozen pages.

    • If your machine starts to feel slow when pasting very large documents, switch to the next method.


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    3. Method 2 – Extract section by section


    For long documents such as books, technical specifications, or annual reports, processing everything at once may be heavy. Instead, treat each major section as a separate batch.


    Recommended approach:


  • Use the navigation pane or table of contents in Word to locate the first section you care about.
  • Select that section only.
  • Copy and paste into URL Extractor.
  • Click GET URL and review the results.
  • Use Copy All to export the links into a spreadsheet or note, adding a column for “Section”.
  • Clear the content in URL Extractor.
  • Repeat for the next section until you have covered the whole document.

    • At the end, you will have a consolidated link index, grouped or labelled by section if you wish.


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    4. What URL Extractor pulls out


    From the content you paste, URL Extractor will try to detect:


  • Standard web links beginning with `http://` or `https://`.
  • Email links that use the `mailto:` scheme.
  • Other link types that appear as anchors in the HTML representation of the document.

    • Some internal Word navigation elements may also show up as links. When you review the list, you can simply delete entries that are clearly for internal jumps or that only make sense inside the original document.


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    5. Cleaning the extracted list


    After extraction, you will likely see more links than you actually need. Cleaning the list makes it more useful.


    Remove links that are not relevant


    Consider removing:


  • Local file paths that only work on your computer.
  • Internal navigation links such as “Back to top”.
  • Automatically generated links that are not part of the actual content.

    • Keeping only external, meaningful URLs makes the list easier to read and share.


    Clarify labels


    If you plan to reuse the list outside of the original document, labels matter. You can edit the display text for each link so that it explains what the URL is for, rather than repeating generic phrases like “click here”.


    Group by purpose


    You might want to group links into categories such as “References”, “Examples”, or “Further reading”. You can do this later in a spreadsheet or note, using the cleaned output from URL Extractor as your starting point.


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    6. Export your URLs


    Once the list looks good, export it in the way that fits your workflow.


    Copy all links


  • Use Copy All in URL Extractor.
  • Paste into:

    • - A spreadsheet (Google Sheets, Excel).

    - A project management tool.

    - A documentation system or wiki.

  • Add extra columns for notes such as “Status”, “Owner”, or “Follow‑up”.

    • Use the list for QA


    If you want to check whether links in the document still work:


  • Leave only the external URLs you want to verify.
  • Click Open All.
  • Let your browser open each link in a new tab.
  • Quickly scan for 404 pages, redirects that look suspicious, or content that no longer matches the document.

    • This is usually far quicker than clicking through the Word document itself.


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    7. Dealing with formatting and copy issues


    Copying from Word to a browser is not always perfect. Here are a few ways to reduce friction.


    Do not strip formatting on copy


    If you use “Copy as plain text” or pass the content through a plain‑text editor, hyperlink information will disappear. Always copy directly from Word into the browser without an intermediate step that removes formatting.


    Try “Keep Source Formatting” when pasting elsewhere


    When you paste the extracted list into another tool, choose an option that keeps formatting when available. This helps preserve clickable links in the target document or sheet.


    Split very large documents


    If pasting the whole document at once makes the page feel unresponsive, split the job:


  • Process one chapter or major section at a time.
  • Immediately export and clear between batches.

    • This keeps each run small and predictable.


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    8. Example: building a link index for a report


    Imagine you maintain a 60‑page research report in Word. At the end of the project you want a separate appendix that lists every external resource you referenced.


    You could:


  • Go through each chapter, copy that chapter into URL Extractor, and extract the links.
  • For each batch, export the list to a spreadsheet and mark which chapter it came from.
  • Merge all batches into a single sheet and remove duplicates.
  • Sort by chapter or topic and copy the final list into the appendix of your report.

    • You now have a structured index of URLs that readers can use, and a convenient checklist for future updates.


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    9. Best practices recap


  • Copy directly from Word into URL Extractor; avoid plain‑text intermediates.
  • For small documents, process everything at once; for large ones, work section by section.
  • After extraction, delete internal or local‑only links unless you specifically need them.
  • Edit labels so that each remaining link is easy to understand outside the original document.
  • Use Copy All to move the list into spreadsheets or tracking tools.
  • Use Open All when you need to quickly check that links are live.

    • With this workflow, turning a dense Word document into a clean list of URLs becomes a matter of minutes instead of hours.


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