Word documents store every external hyperlink in a hidden relationship file inside the .docx package, and on a Mac you can extract that list to a plain TXT file in three local steps before deciding which links to remove. The relationship file, named word/_rels/document.xml.rels, holds one entry per external hyperlink with its target URL and an External mode flag, which is why Word can display clickable links even when the URL itself is invisible or attached to an image or a citation field. A Mac user who simply selects anchor text and presses Command+Shift+F9 in Word strips the formatting, but it cannot show where every link was pointing once the underline disappears. That gap is where a relationship-file reader becomes useful: it pulls the safe http, https, and mailto destinations into a one-URL-per-line list that you can review, paste into a spreadsheet, or run through a separate URL checker. The list deliberately excludes internal bookmarks, local file paths, JavaScript-style targets, malformed values, and duplicates, so what you see represents the document's real external references rather than every clickable object Word might render.
Why Mac users need a hyperlink list before removing anything
Mac users hit a specific friction point with hyperlinks that Windows users sometimes avoid. Word for Mac hides the URL behind styled text, behind an image, behind a citation field managed by a reference manager, or behind a button shape, and the standard right-click Remove Hyperlink option only works after you have selected that exact anchor. Selecting every hyperlink in a long document by hand is slow, and the Command+Shift+F9 shortcut strips formatting but does not show what was being linked once the underline is gone. Auditors, editors, and anyone who receives a Word file from a colleague often want the destination list first so they can decide which links are worth keeping, which need a replacement URL, and which were never meant to be there at all. A clean TXT list also makes it easy to compare a document's links against a publishing policy, a reference list, or a banned-domain list without reopening Word on the Mac.
What the Word Hyperlink Extractor reads and what it skips
The Word Hyperlink Extractor is built around the Office Open XML structure that every modern .docx file uses. When you select a document in the browser, the tool validates the ZIP container, then opens only word/_rels/document.xml.rels and reads the Relationship entries whose Type is the hyperlink type and whose TargetMode is External. It keeps the Target attribute, decodes XML entities, normalizes http, https, and mailto URLs, and removes duplicates. Nothing else in the document package is touched, which is why the process stays fast and private.
The tool is deliberately conservative. It does not scan visible paragraph text for URL-shaped strings, because a guessed address can be wrong or can turn an internal reference into an apparent external destination. It also does not visit any URL, resolve redirects, check whether a domain is live, or score reputation. That scope is what makes the result reproducible across documents and safe to share as a plain text file.
| Item type in a Word document | Returned by the extractor | Why this rule exists |
|---|---|---|
| http://example.com | Yes | Safe external web destination |
| https://example.com/page | Yes | Safe external web destination |
| mailto:[email protected] | Yes | Safe mail destination |
| Internal bookmark such as #section1 | No | Internal reference, not an external URL |
| Relative file path such as ../doc.docx | No | Local file system target |
| file:///C:/Users/... | No | Local file system target |
| javascript:alert(1) | No | Unsafe protocol |
| Duplicate http://example.com | No, listed once | Deduplicated to keep the list clean |
| Malformed URL value | No | Cannot be normalized safely |
Extract hyperlinks from a Word document on Mac
This is the three-step workflow for Mac users who want the destination list before they touch any formatting in Word.
- Choose one .docx Word document from your device using the file picker. The browser reads the file locally and does not start an upload to any service.
- Wait while the browser reads external hyperlink relationships from the document package. The tool validates the ZIP container, opens word/_rels/document.xml.rels, and filters for Relationship entries where Type is hyperlink and TargetMode is External.
- Review the safe destinations on the page and download the one-link-per-line TXT report. Each line is a single http, https, or mailto URL with no surrounding text or anchor snippet.
Once the file is downloaded you can open it in TextEdit, paste it into Numbers or Excel, or feed it into a separate URL checker. The original .docx on your Mac is unchanged, so you can keep editing in Word with full context and anchor text available whenever you need it.
What the TXT report contains and what it deliberately omits
The report is intentionally narrow. Every line is exactly one external destination URL. The order reflects the order in which the relationships appear in the relationship file, duplicates are removed, and no header row, anchor text, page number, or paragraph snippet is included. That format is the point: it makes the list easy to pipe into a spreadsheet, a domain blocklist, or a separate URL-safety workflow without extra parsing.
Several things that look like links in Word do not appear in the report, and that is by design. Internal bookmarks, headings, and cross-references live as separate relationship types and are skipped. Local file paths and relative references are skipped because they are not external web destinations. JavaScript-style URLs and other unsafe protocols are skipped to avoid pretending the document links to something it does not. Field codes inserted by citation managers, mail merge fields, and embedded objects may carry their own clickable behavior in Word but are not modeled as standard hyperlink relationships, so they will not appear in the list either. A visible URL written as ordinary text rather than as a real hyperlink will also be excluded, because the tool reads relationships, not visible strings.
Pair the extracted list with Word for Mac's removal shortcuts
Once you have the TXT report you can decide what to do with each link in Word for Mac using the built-in commands. To remove a single visible hyperlink, select the anchor text or image, right-click, and choose Remove Hyperlink. To strip every hyperlink in the document at once, select all with Command+A and press Command+Shift+F9, which converts every field code and hyperlink to plain text in one pass. To stop Word for Mac from creating new hyperlinks automatically while you type, open Word, choose Preferences, click AutoCorrect, and uncheck the relevant box under AutoFormat As You Type so URLs are no longer replaced with clickable links.
The TXT report makes those commands safer to use. If a link was attached to an image, a citation, or a button shape, the simple right-click option will not reach it, but the list tells you it exists so you can decide whether to keep it, replace the destination, or leave the document alone. Treat each URL in the list as a document-supplied string that still needs normal human review before you publish or share the file.
Privacy and limits of the local extractor
Your file stays in your browser. The document package is checked before it is unpacked, and the link relationship XML is read only after you select a .docx file. No document text, pages, comments, or macros are sent to a service, and the tool does not crawl, redirect, or score any destination. The Office Open XML relationship format that the extractor depends on is defined by the Microsoft Open XML documentation and the underlying ECMA-376 standard, which is why the same extractor behaves the same way on a .docx produced by Word for Mac, Word for Windows, or any other compliant editor.
The extractor also has explicit limits that keep it from becoming a general document parser. It rejects malformed archives, oversized relationship XML, unsupported ZIP64 directory records, and packages that exceed its stated local limits before showing a result. It does not handle old .doc files, encrypted packages, or internally anchored links because treating those as external URLs would be misleading. It does not crawl destinations, resolve redirects, inspect mail recipients, or claim to preserve page context; the TXT list is a precise, reproducible view of the document's safe external hyperlink relationships, and the original .docx on your Mac remains the source of truth for anchor text, formatting, and surrounding paragraphs.