How do you copy text in a hyperlink w/o selecting it?

TidBITS Talk
1

Simple GUI problem. There must be a smarter way to fix this than my kludge.

So, you want to copy a bit of text that’s on a website but it’s also (party of) a hyperlink. How do you copy that text without selecting the hyperlink? There must be some smarter way than trying to click to the left/right/above/below and dragging in the hopes of selecting the right stuff and then trimming off the excess junk after paste.

GUI wizards, please enlighten me.

2

In Safari, this works for me: right click the link - this selects the link text, along with opening a menu, from where I can choose Copy.

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3

This doesn’t involve subtle selecting, but is also a bit of a kludge:

  1. Right-click the hyperlink and select ‘Copy Link’

  2. in the TextEdit app, create a new document and Paste the copied link.

  3. Select the copied link, right-click it, and select ‘Remove Link’ from the menu.

  4. Now select the text you want, and close TextEdit without saving the document.

4

I use the “Paste and Match Style”, or “Option-Shift-Command-V”, pasting into an email, or some other text program.

5

I just tried using my “Paste and Match Style” in TextEdit, and that works too, with less steps. Since I have the keyboard command memorized, it’s quick…

6

Thank you, @ashley. That works and it’s as simple as you could want.

1 Like
7

Great! Very pleased I could help :slight_smile: … I very much appreciate this forum.

2 Likes
8

Thanks for this. I’ve always seen Copy Link, but now testing your approach, lower down I saw Copy Link Title. That did it! (Safari 15.0 on Big Sur 11.6).

9

The No Formatting app for Macs has useful features that may help:
https://st.nexushubs.com/
I use it to avoid pasting hyperlinks.

10

In Firefox, I have the “Link Text and Location Copier” add-on to enable copying the text (all, however, not part) of a link.