I use LibreOffice Calc on a Linux system. Sometimes when I paste text into a cell (in particular, email addresses) they display as blue font on grey background. But I want black font on white background.
3 Answers
On my version of LibreOffice version 5.0.0.5, I use Ctrl+M
I think there used to be the menu Format > Clear Direct Formatting, but it looks like it's gone.
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Incredible that right-click is no help for some "auto-format" garbage we didn't ask for or turn on. Tried Format-Cell, also - could find nothing to fix this. So a mystery control-function was the way out. Thank goodness for your answer.– JosephKDec 20, 2017 at 13:23
The blue font indicates Calc is interpreting the text as a hyperlink, in this case an email address.
You will need to either copy the address as text rather than a hyperlink, or remove the link after pasting the address.
I think with Calc if you right click on the link you will have an option to "remove hyperlink" ... it might be elsewhere in the interface, sorry I don't have LibreOffice at the moment.
Then again, another option is to keep the link in place, and change the colours associated with displaying the hyperlink. For that use the Format Cell options.
Daniel's answer is "theoretically" correct, but there may be a bug in Calc or a "missing" feature so it doesn't work as it's supposed to. The formatting is due to Calc treating email addresses as a special type of hyperlink, a Mailto: link. Clicking on it launches an email client with a blank message pre-addressed to that email address for your convenience.
None of the methods described in the LO Calc documentation or online references that I found seem to work. There is no context menu item "remove hyperlink" for a mailto: link. No formatting changes affect it. Pre-formatting of the target cell doesn't affect it. Ditto for Paste Special (any options). You are supposed to be able to disable this via:
Tools | Autocorrect Options | Options tab | uncheck URL Recognition
However, this has no effect on a mailto: link.
I did find a workaround. Say the mailto link is in A1. In another cell, put =A1
. The result will be a plain text version of the email address in that cell.