Lots of Office users have written us thinking that the link is now unreachable. As usual, there's a workaround for the bug. Just highlight the link and press Ctrl+K and that will open the hyperlink dialog box. For a more lasting fix, right-click on the link and choose Ignore All or Add to Dictionary to make the red underline go away.
In Office 2000 the annoying thing about links was that a single accidental click on one would cause Office to seize up while it goes off to open that page. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about this annoyance. In the new Office you can follow a hyperlink by holding the Control key down while clicking.
Then in Office XP, Microsoft has added a new bug. If you type in some hyperlinks, Office tries to "fix" them to correct errors. The problem is that not all the changes it makes are necessary. For example, you can have double slashes (//) in links despite what Microsoft thinks. You get no warning of any link changes that are made, so you have to beware.
You can't edit the arbitrarily changed hyperlink since it'll be fixed as soon as you click OK on the hyperlinks dialog box. The workaround is to press Alt+F9, this will reveal the field code that makes the hyperlink (look for the curly brackets, you can change the link in the field). In FrontPage you can switch to HTML view and change the link there (look for the href tag).
Automatic hyperlinks trap
You're typing away and enter a Web link like http://www.woodyswatch.com and lo it turns into a hyperlink. Not magic, just a simple extension of the AutoCorrect feature that fixes up your common spelling mistakes. Office "sees" the http:// at the start and knows to convert it and what follows into a link. The text and the underlying link are exactly the same.
But there lies the trap in these automatic links. You have to remember that if you change the visible link text, it does NOT change the underlying link. You have to change the link separately.
This happens more often than you'd think. You type a link but realize later that you spelled it wrong. Going back and changing the link you can see won't change the underlying link. You have to do that separately.
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