Hyperlinks in Spreadsheets

This was driving me nuts. Whenever I entered a URL in the spreadsheet it became gray/blue and was recognized as a hyperlink. Sometimes Format - Default Formatting helped, but sometimes it didn't. And of course it was annoying too, to fiddle around with the Default Formatting.

I found a solution at:

How to remove gray background from links in cells?

In short:

Turning off Automatic URL Recognition

If you do not want OpenOffice.org to automatically recognize URLs as you are typing, there are several ways of turning off this feature.

Undo URL Recognition

1.When you are typing and notice that a text has just been automatically converted into a hyperlink, press Ctrl+Z to undo this formatting.
2.If you do not notice this conversion until later, select the hyperlink and choose the menu command Format - Default Formatting.

Turn off URL Recognition

1.Load a document of the type for which you want to modify the URL recognition.
If you want to modify the URL recognition for text documents, open a text document.
2.Choose Tools - AutoCorrect Options.
3.In the AutoCorrect dialog, select the Options tab.
4.If you unmark URL Recognition, words will no longer be automatically replaced with hyperlinks.
In OpenOffice.org Writer there are two check boxes in front of URL Recognition. The box in the first column is for later post-editing and the box in the second column is for AutoCorrect as you type.