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Two related questions that come up for me in Firefox and perhaps elsewhere in Windows 7 when coming across a link like this: How to Select Hyperlink Text in Google Chrome?

  • While reading html/a web page, I want to select some text that happens to be a hyperlink. If it's one word and not a hyperlink, I could double-click. Since it's a link, I'd like to have some ctrl/alt/RMB shortcut to select the link so that I can quickly copy the text.

  • Same question as above, though I want to copy the text and its hyperlinkto paste into a Rich/HTML editor/doc. For example, I'm reading an article that has embedded links and I'd like to paste that embedded link into an email so that the recipient sees the text and can also follow the link, just like it was in the original article.

Both of these scenarios boil down to the ability to easily select hyperlinked text. I waste a surprising amount of time trying to figure out where I can put my cursor to start dragging across a link so that I can copy either the text or the text with its link.

I've seen questions asking this for chrome more than firefox - maybe there's a FF plugin. BTW If I just wanted the link in FF, I could right-click anywhere in the link/text and choose Copy Link Location, but I want to copy the text with and without the link, not just the link.

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2 Answers 2

to select some text from a link, hold ALT, start selecting the text and then move slightly the cursor from the link and release it,

To copy the link (without the text in front) you could simply drag it directly into any text editor :

drag it over the icon of the editor in the Taskbar (the editor window will pop up) and drop it there. it will shows as below

http:// superuser.com/questions/173200/how-to-select-hyperlink-text-in-google-chrome

another option is to select and right click the whole link, then go to [view selection source] and you will get the full HTML code of the link.

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I wasn't aware of the ALT select, that's useful, though a bit awkward as it often brings us the Save As dialog. Too bad drag and drop only copies the link since that's already available via RMB. What's I'd really like to be able to do is double-click to select the whole link (or something like that), but ALT-double-click doesn't do that (just brings up Save As dialog). –  Cincinnati Joe Jul 5 '11 at 14:49
to avoid the "Save as dialog", hover out the link when you release the mouse button, I'm not aware of any other native methods to select the links –  Revolter Jul 5 '11 at 16:43
Ok, thanks. Maybe I should tag this question with Firefox in case anyone knows of a shortcut or plugin to do this kind of thing. –  Cincinnati Joe Jul 5 '11 at 17:45

You can use LinkSidebar addon for Firefox to copy multiple links at one time. After installing the addon, open the Preferences window and make sure you select "When I click on a link in the sidebar Copy Link Location". Then open a web page and activate the Links Sidebar using Firefox' menu ("View > Sidebar > Links" or Ctrl + Shift + L). Now you can see all of the links in that web page. Just hold Ctrl and select the links you want by clicking on them, and then paste in Notepad or any other text program.

I've just tested this on my PC and it works.

enter image description here

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So this is to address my first request, the desire to copy text from a labeled link, is that right? (wanted to be sure since you mention configuring it for "Copy Link Location") Using the ALT key as described in Revolter's reply seems simpler for copying just the text from link label. Is there a way to copy the link and the text for pasting into a rich/HTML editor (Word, WordPad, email)? –  Cincinnati Joe Jul 5 '11 at 15:11
@Cincinnati Joe: I guess it's not possible to copy both labels and links with this addon. It can only copy URLs (links). –  Mehper C. Palavuzlar Jul 5 '11 at 15:26

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