It’s the little things that can get you into trouble, like the time I hilariously set Rick’s underwear on fire (he was wearing them) or, more generally, technical inaccuracies in your business writing. I can’t help you with garment arson, but I do have a tool that can help prevent broken hyperlinks in your Word documents.
Document Hyperlink Checker is a Word add-on that scans your file for links, and it flags any that are potentially broken. Just fire the checker and it shows you a dialog with all of your links. Click the Suspicious button to see just the links that are potentially broken.
It’s fine, as far as it goes, but Document Hyperlink Checker only detects links added with Word’s hyperlink insertion control — it’ll ignore any URLs typed directly into the doc. Nor will the tool fire your browser for you — you’ll need to test any questionable links manually. And worst of all, I found it wasn’t always 100% effective, missing some broken links in its testing.
On the plus side, Document Hyperlink Checker is free — but it’s only barely worth the price. Has anyone found a better link checker? Please let me know in the comments.
And while you’re trying to polish your latest business report, be sure to check out my recent set of tips on how to write better business documents.
