How to cancel the automatic hyperlink of a URL
Hi I know everyone is very satisfied with the hyperlink function, which makes the interface more concise.
There is a problem that has bothered me for a long time.
As a programmer, I need to write code, such as the following:
echo "127.0.0.1 www.test.com" >> /etc/hosts
However, workflowy will automatically convert the URL part of it into a hyperlink, which leads to the following form when I paste it into other programs:
echo "127.0.0.1 [www.test.com](www.test.com)" >> /etc/hosts
I tried to set the URL to be empty in the url setting, but it didn't work.
I tried to search for related issues in this forum and Google, but everyone seems to be interested in the introduction of hyperlinks.
Does anyone know what to do to avoid automatic URL appending hyperlinks?
Can this problem be solved through a single item setting or system setting?
Any suggestions are welcome, thank you.
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@Frank
For content that only contains URLs, I have tried plain pasting on both macOS and Windows, but the hyperlink is still automatically generated.
Even for those manually entered URLs, a simple space will generate a hyperlink.
Eg: "www.test.com (a space here) blablabla... other content (another space here)", Both of these spaces will cause the URL to automatically form a hyperlink.
Considering that this is not a serious problem, I just want to confirm whether there are settings that I don't know about.
So be it. ;-)
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Thanks for pointing out the ctrl+shift+v
I also needed to clear a link. In my case i had a bullet that was a mix of pasted components to a command line parameter involving URLs. By pasting bits of URL to compose the result, I ended up with https://A/mix/of/links. As suggested, i cut the mix and then ctrl+shift+v (unformatted paste) to get a single hyperlink.
So i am good, but this is indeed a case where I didn't actually want/need a hyperlink, and the automatic detection (when not something i can disable case by case) just made it harder to edit the command.
Of course there are other tools/editors for this sort of thing, and it is easy to workaround, but please consider this to be another reference point of anecdotal usage. I kinda expected it to work somewhat like MS word et. al where i can right click on an automatically formatted hyperlink and "remove link" to turn it back to plain text.
Thanks for your consideration!
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The copy unformatted text key combination doesn't work on Mac (opt+cmd+shift+v). And how it was supposed to work anyway, since the text in the clipboard is not formatted on the first place?
It's a pretty annoying thing, I've got my notes with weird links here and there, and no way to remove them.
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Hi there,
@matrello, could you give some examples of weird links you've got?
We currently can't turn a hyperlink into plain text. Anything with a "x://" protocol or a ".com" (etc.) or a .de, .uk, .za (and hundreds of other country domain suffixes) will create a hyperlink, as it does in other apps. We've done this for the last decade+
I have logged this as something for the team to consider, though :-)
~Frank
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Hi Frank,
it's ok that you create hyperlinks as you're doing for a decade, that's not the point. The point is that you can't remove them and I don't remember now any other app where you actually can't.
This is an example of weird links inside my notes:
Select Id, Subscription__r.Contact__r.Name, Subscription__r.Cours__r.CoursCatalog__r.Name from Inscription_Module__c where Module__c IN (list of modules related to the class record)
So in a node where I take note of some queries, you can imagine how it looks and how complicated is to walk through them without having the browser popping up!
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Hello @matrello, I asked this question a few months ago, and currently use a temporary solution to handle automatic links: Use the stylus plugin to hide the hyperlinks of workflowy content.
This is certainly not a perfect solution, after all, it cancels all hyperlinks. But for programmers (such as myself), this is an acceptable solution.
In addition, @Frank, the function of automatic hyperlink is very good, but it deviates from my expectations of using workflowy. I think workflowy is a service that allows users to abandon styles and focus on text content and outline structure. However, the automatic hyperlink function performed behaviors beyond my expectations: it forced me to pay attention to this special content (ie, the web page address) and interrupted the smooth writing process. In other words, all content should be equal, unless the user actively adds emphasized formatting (such as bold, underline, etc.).
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I thought I'd just add a vote for enabling the option to remove hyperlinks - it's annoying to have them in a list, as trying to click on text to select it can result in the browser trying to open web pages, and it's pretty standard in word-processing apps to have the option to remove links.
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+1 for being able to remove links, it makes no sense not to have this as an option. If I type www.example.com it automatically creates a link ... but often with what I do, I don't want the link, don't need it and don't want the hassle for when I go to edit and accidentally click on the link and launch my browser.
I've tried editing the link and deleting the text, but that doesn't work.
I agree it's pretty standard to have a way to remove links, so please can we have that?
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Just another person screaming with the chorus here. Many many programs will automatically hyperlink text, but I cannot think of a single one where you couldn't unlink the text no matter what. It means I just can't use Workflowy for an important technical documentation project, which is awful bc it would be so useful!
Workflowy is popular with technical workers, but now you have broken the ability to use any filename or IP address without cluttering the outline with unusable links. You already have the UI to edit the link ... I just want to be able to clear out the URL field in that box and have the text unlink, just like it works it every other program. I love the ability to hyperlink when I want to, but this forced linking is quite unwelcome, and has turned the feature into a negative for me.
We are making a reasonable request here.
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One more voice to be able to get rid of hyperlinks and also, recently, I not only get an automatic hyperlink, but - if it is pointing to a YouTube video - I get a large icon preview of the video. Then, if I accidently click on it, it launches the video itself. This has risen to a high level of annoyance. I would like to know others who have a workaround for this.
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Hi Rich,
We don't have a timeline... but we know we'd like to build code blocks. We're making headway in several things at the moment... including a trash feature for users to restore their own deleted data, image and file backup to dropbox, a bunch more search operators for color, etc. (implemented but we're going to put out a autocomplete helper for these, which is working internally)... auto creation of [[new pages]] for backlinks... and a bunch of other things that people are scolding us for not having. We will get there!
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Not the solution folks here are looking for, but I am able to manually remove the automatically created hyperlink by adding a space anywhere in the url. Then I right click the hyperlink, and an "unlink" button is available. I can then remove the space, and no hyperlink will reappear.
By the way, Ctrl+Shift+V doesn't work on Mac. Neither does replacing Ctrl with Cmd. Is there another thing? I know the advice is dated, but this would work for me as well.
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Even text-only-mode paste doesn't work for Python scripts. Type or text-only paste (Ctrl+Shift+v) "debug script.py issue" into WorkFlowy, and there's no way for it not to be a link, and you can't remove the link, even by trying to delete the link text in the little popup (it won't save). It's very annoying.
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Hi David,
Thank you also for the tweet. At the moment it is not possible to unlink such items. While pasting code into WorkFlowy is not optimized, not too far from now we would like to have a code blocks feature. I have long-since put in a request for the unlinking of any text. The developers are aware of this...
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I was just wondering how this is coming along Workflowy team? Like most of the others above, I am also a developer and find it so frustrating that when I enter server names and other non-url items with dots in them, that it is automatically generated as a URL (sometimes randomly) without the ability to remove the automatic generating of it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with the automatic generation of the URL, but cannot figure out why you did not provide the ability to remove the URL. In most other cases, there is the 'unlink' button, but when automatically detecting these other (sometimes random) items, the button is not provided and only the 'cancel' and 'apply' buttoms are there.
Why not just make the 'unlink' button available for all cases? This would not require any mixed scenario logic changes to the code as the button will appear for all scenarios. No if, else or any other code requirements.
Obviously I don't know what your code base looks like, or the logic you have in place for the editing of URLs, but would this not be a straight forward modification?
Please don't get me wrong, I am not trying to berate you or imply that you're not compitent programmers. You have obviously created this amazing product for all of us to our eternal gratitude!
So please consider making this (I hope) minor change that would make so many of us happy! Thanks!
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