Links with Microsoft Word

Word automatically makes a URL into a link. But you want your links to be on meaningful words, not on URLs. To take control of your links, you will need to use Word’s “Insert Hyperlink” feature. Unfortunately, that dialog box is arranged differently in different versions of Word. Even the labels come in many variations. So if the instructions below don’t describe exactly what you see on your computer, look for something close.

Link to another Web site

To link to a page on someone else’s Web site...

  1. Click and drag to select the text or image you want to make into a link.
  2. From the “Insert” menu choose “Hyperlink” or click the “Hyperlink” button on Word’s toolbar.
  3. The “Insert Hyperlink” dialog box will have a place to type the address of the Web page you want to link to. This may be labeled “Address” or “Link to.” Type the full address, starting with the “http://” or, from within the dialog box, you can select a page from your Internet Explorer favorites or history and the address will be automatically entered.
  4. Click “OK.”

Link to a page in your Web site

If you are careful to put your Web pages together in the same folder before you link from one to the other, and you copy your finished Web pages together into the same folder in WebCT, the links you make in the Web pages on your computer will work in the copies of those pages in WebCT as well.

  1. Create a folder on your computer to hold the Web pages you want to link to each other.
  2. Save a copy of the document you want to link to into that folder as a Web page.
  3. Save a copy of the document you want to link from into that folder as a Web page.
  4. Open the Web page you want to link from in Word, if it isn’t open already.
  5. Click and drag to select the text you want to make into a link.
  6. From the “Insert” menu choose “Hyperlink” or click the “Hyperlink” button on Word’s toolbar.
  7. In the “Insert Hyperlink” dialog box, you can browse to the document you want to link to, select it from a recent documents list, or type the file name in the box where you would put the URL for a page on another site. (If you type the file name, type only the file, no “http://.” Be sure to include the file name’s “.htm” or “.html” extension, though.)
  8. Click “OK.”

Link to a location in the current document

To make a long Web page easier to use, provide a list of links at the top that jump you to the major sections of the page. If you have created the headings for those sections by choosing headings from the Style menu, you’re ready to begin. If you want to jump to a spot that’s not a heading, you must first insert a bookmark at the spot you want to link to.

  1. Near the top of your document, create of list of your document’s section headings and/or bookmark destinations.
  2. Select the text of an item you want to make into a link.
  3. Launch the “Insert Hyperlink” dialog box by choosing “Hyperlink” from the “Insert” menu or by clicking the “Hyperlink” button on the toolbar.
  4. Look for an option to link to an anchor, bookmark or location in the current document.
  5. You’ll find a list of headings and bookmarks.
  6. Choose the heading or bookmark you want to link to.
  7. Click “OK.”