How to Remove Hyperlinks from a PDF for Free

The fastest way to remove hyperlinks from a PDF is to flatten it.

Flattening turns interactive PDF elements into a static page layer. In plain English, that means clickable links, fillable fields, buttons, and other interactive parts stop working. The text is still there, unchanged, but clicking on links won’t do anything.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Upload your document to Flatten PDF.

2. Wait for the tool to flatten your PDF into a single layer.

3. Download the new PDF.

Open the finished file and try clicking the old links to test them. If the links no longer open, the hyperlink actions have been removed.

But there is one catch.

Flattening removes the click action, not the visual style. If the link was blue and underlined before, it will still be blue and underlined after flattening. It just won’t be clickable anymore.

Removing a hyperlink from a PDF can mean two slightly different things.

Sometimes you only want to remove the clickable part. The text can stay where it is, but it should behave like normal text. This is what flattening does.

Other times, you want to remove the link completely, including the blue color and underline. For that, you need to edit the text itself. The better method is to convert the PDF to Word, remove the hyperlink in Word, then save the file as a PDF again.

A quick way to think about it:

Flattening is fast. Converting to Word is cleaner.

Choose the method based on what you want the final PDF to look like.

If you want to remove one hyperlink from a PDF, you still have the same two choices.

The fastest option is to flatten the PDF. This removes clickable links from the whole file, including the one you’re trying to remove. It’s simple, but it’s not selective. If the PDF has other useful links, those will stop working too. So, this is better saved for PDFs that only have a single link in them. If it has multiple links, and you need the other links to still work, the next section will cover the other method for removing hyperlinks from a PDF.

If you want to remove a hyperlink from a PDF and the blue underlined styling, flattening is not the best method. It’s also not the right method if you only want to remove a single link and have other links in the document still work.

To remove the styling properly, convert the PDF to Word.

1. Upload your document to PDF to Word.

2. Wait a few seconds for the conversion to finish.

3. Download the Word version.

4. Open the file in Word.

5. Right-click on any links you want to remove.

6. Select “Hyperlink” and then “Remove Hyperlink.”

7. Save the file as a PDF once you’re done.

This is the better method for polished documents. You’re not only removing the link, but you’re also getting rid of any link styling, so the text looks like all the other text. Use it for client files, proposals, reports, resumes, application documents, school materials, or anything that needs to look clean.

The same two methods work on mobile: flatten the PDF if you only want to stop links from opening, or convert the PDF to Word first if you also want to remove the blue underlined styling.

For one-off edits, you can do everything in your mobile browser with Smallpdf. Upload the file, use Flatten PDF or PDF to Word, then download the finished version.

If you work with PDFs on your phone or tablet often, the Smallpdf mobile app may be easier than starting from your browser every time.

Hyperlinks usually come back because they were never removed from the original file.

Say you flatten a PDF today. The links stop working. Then next week, you open the original Word document, make a few edits, and save it as a new PDF. If the Word document still has hyperlinks, the new PDF will have them too.

The same thing can happen with Google Docs, PowerPoint, design files, templates, or website exports.

To stop hyperlinks coming back, you need to remove them from the source document first.

That means:

• Remove the link in Word before exporting to PDF.

• Remove links in Google Docs before downloading as a PDF.

• Check buttons, images, logos, and text boxes in design tools.

• Look for automatically created links, especially plain URLs and email addresses.