Switch off underlining for hyperlinks in OpenOffice

Our current document pipeline goes from Markdown (for content) through HTML (for structural transformations) to OpenOffice (for pagination etc.)

This is dandy but by default OpenOffice underlines hyperlinks and anything that looks like it could be converted into one (email addresses, URLs). It also colours them blue.

This is extremely annoying a problem, as our “structural transformations” include indexing, TOC, footnotes and other processes that produce useful hyperlinks that absolutely should not be underlined. Or blue.

Unless of course you want that Particle Physics Lab circa ’95 feel for your document.

Here’s the slightly non-obvious way to fix it.

1. Bring up the styles and formatting dialog using Format > Styles and Formatting
2. Choose the Character Styles section (second button from the left)
3. Right click on Internet Link and choose Modify
4. Go to the Font Effects tab
5. Switch Underlining to (Without) and Font colour to Automatic