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How Do I Prevent Dropbox Paper from Converting Plain Text URLs into Hyperlinks?

Hi Everyone:

I was using a different file hosting service. However, I experienced recurring issues and decided to try Dropbox.

That service also has document-editing functionality which allowed me to create and edit documents online. I copied the text content from those online documents and pasted into new Dropbox Paper documents.

However, I noticed that Dropbox converted my plain text URLs into hyperlinks which shows previews of those webpages directly in my document. I was trying to convert those hyperlinks back to plain text URLs but am not able to do so. Each time I click the link it loads the webpage in a new browser tab but I do not want this to happen. I know that in Word, you can remove hyperlinks to prevent them from being clickable links and instead keep them as text. How can I fix this in Dropbox Paper?

How can I prevent Dropbox Paper from converting my text URLS into hyperlinks with webpage previews in the future? I prefer to keep them as text links so that I can copy or download the content to use in my other documents.

Thank you.

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Accepted answers

Hannah

Hey @tamarawill24, thanks for your post about Dropbox Paper!

At the moment, with the way Paper works, the URLs will appear as hyperlinks with previews of the linked site.

However, you're welcome to post an idea about this on our Paper idea board, for other users to upvote.

Let me know if you have any questions.

All comments

Hannah

tamarawill24

Hi Hannah:

Thank you for your quick response and for the clarification that Dropbox automatically converts all text links to hyperlinks with previews of the linked site.

I prefer to keep the text only (non-clickable) links or URLs so this means that Dropbox's document editing feature is not the right fit for me. Hence, I will continue to search for another document editing service that suits my needs. However, I can continue to use the Dropbox's storage service.

Thanks for your suggestion to post or promote my idea in Paper idea board. I will do so soon.

Best Regards

Hannah

I understand, Tamara, and thanks for getting back to me.

If you ever need anything else, make sure to give us a shout.

Have a wonderful day!

evanhill

Hi, please change this functionality, no user wants their URL to automatically convert into a preview, if they wanted that, you could give them the option to expand in to a preview. At the very least give users the option NOT to have their URLs render as previews. This is terrible UI and a time waster when users have to figure out hacks to make URLs not render as previews. Please change.

evanhill

Please enable users to choose if they want to see their URLs as previews in Paper or plain URLs. Most users want to see plain URLs. Currently there is no choice. All URLs render as previews. The only solutions are user hacks. Please enable users to turn off URL previews.

yaoxiao6

I found out one way. You may put your link inside a code block (whether in-line or paragraph). You can do so with two ` www.your_link.com ` for in-line or ``` www.your_link.com ``` for paragraph format. For example:

www.your_link.com

Hope this is helpful

norabrowndesign

I also find this very annoying, and don't want my collaborators to have to learn to use ``` backticks just to stop urls from turning into link previews. For now I will have to go back to a shared Google Doc.