I’ve been using LO for a while and I get frustrated every time I reopen a Writer doc and find that some of the hyperlinks in the doc are either not underlined or are underlined but the text color has changed to black from blue. Some times, even when applying a hyperlink (Ctrl+K), the link is underlined but text color doesn’t change. I’ll either need to remove the hyperlink and re-create it or change the text color manually. I’m using Win 10 Pro. I experienced the same problem when using Linux Mint on the same machine. Anyone with ideas on how to solve this problem? Thanks in advance.
First make sure your document is saved .odt as not all formatting can be translated in .doc(x). Word is rather poorer in expressive power than Writer because it lacks many notions about styles.
When you create a hyperlink Writer assign it character style Internet Link (there also exists a Visited Internet Link).
All you have to do is customize character style Internet Link.
I recommend you read the Writer Style for an introduction to styles. The short procedure is:
- display the style sidepane with
F11if not already visible - click on the second icon from left in the style pane toolbar to list character styles
- right-click on Internet Link and
Modify - customize to your liking
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2023-02-23 edit only corrected formatting errors
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Thanks for this suggestion; it’s an interesting option which I hadn’t thought of. I have customized styles for highlighting and unhighlighting text and so can easily see how this will work. I’m sure this will work well though I’ll have to create a template to use every time I’m writing. Actually, I’ll just add the custom style to the current template. Thanks again. Unfortunately I don’t have enough points to upvote your answer. All the same, I appreciate the help.
Considering that hyperlinks are such a basic thing in documents, isn’t this a weird behavior from LO Writer? This is especially considering that not all hyperlinks experience this “change.”
Writer is not a web browser but a document processor handling text. That you consider a sequence of characters should be understood as a URL (or else) is semantics, something beyond understanding of almost all document processor. Writer includes a courtesy parser to identify URL links or e-mail addresses. When a match is found, it flags the sequence with Internet Link, just as you would do, as an author, with any sequence having special meaning to you (emphasis, comment, quotation, remark, heading, footnote, …). This is what styles are intended for. Attributing distinctive typographical settings to style is second in creative work; the most important is to mark up your text. Formatting is a consequence of markup, not the other way round (and this is what newbies have most difficulties to understand because they were taught typewriting, not author creative work).
Writer imposes no constraint on your text, thus it can’t lock you on some workflow (different from others’).
One very important point i didn’t mention: you can have only one character style on any sequence of characters.
However, Internet Link is rather special. Since it is applied by Writer itself, it comes “over” a user-applied character style. In this context, you have, from bottom to top:
- paragraph style,
- character style,
- Internet Link
- direct formatting.
This means you can add to the user-applied character style, provided you set attributes different from those in the user-applied character style. E.g. if your character style sets italics, you can keep italics if Internet Link does not reset it.
You’ve shared quite some knowledge there, thanks.