UNHCE Information Technology & Distance Education Blog

Source: WordTips by DCI

Smart Tags were developed by Microsoft as a way for companies or
individuals to mark certain words so they lead to additional
information. For instance, a person's name or a company name or some
other proper noun could become a Smart Tag. If so, it appears
on-screen with a wavy purple underline that indicates the word (or
phrase) can be clicked for more information. In some ways, a Smart Tag
is similar to a hyperlink.

You can turn off Smart Tags, so they are not saved with a document, by
following these steps:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options
dialog box.
2. Display the Save tab.
3. Clear the Embed Smart Tags check box.
4. Click OK.

Now you can save your document as you normally would. The setting is
stored with the document, and Smart Tags won't be saved with this
particular document unless you go back and explicitly change the
setting.

If you want the saving of Smart Tags turned off for all your
documents, you need to open the templates you use to create documents,
and then perform the steps just listed. For instance, load the
Normal.dot template and perform the four steps. Save the template, and
then the setting will be turned off for any future documents you
create that are based on Normal.dot. Existing documents, even though
they may be based on Normal.dot, will need to be individually changed.
If you prefer, you can create a small macro that will turn the option
off for you:

Sub OptSmartTagsOff()
ActiveDocument.EmbedSmartTags = False
End Sub