How to convert email to text in a Numbers spreadsheet?

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Level 1

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How to convert email to text in a Numbers spreadsheet?

I am trying to convert email addresses into plain text in a numbers spreadsheet. They were imported from a .csv file. I have formatted all of the cells in the sheet as text. But this one column of email addresses continues to open my Mail program when I try to edit a cell. It is maddening. I cannot find any obvious solutions in the Numbers program. Any help? It must be a simple fix that I am missing. Thanks!

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: converting email to text in numbers

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.7

Posted on Sep 23, 2025 9:00 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Camelot

Level 9

58,257 points

Sep 23, 2025 10:51 AM in response to jodanBlue

This is a preference setting in Numbers where it automagically converts links (web URLs and email addresses) into clickable links.

If you don't want this, turn off the setting in Numbers -> Settings -> Auto-Correction -> Automatically add links to webpages and emails:

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Answer 2

Camelot

Level 9

58,257 points

Sep 25, 2025 9:54 AM in response to jodanBlue

I played with this a little more.

It seems that the preference setting only applies to cells that you enter directly, and once a cell has been marked as an email address, it's set (at least in as far as toggling the preference setting doesn't change the fact).

What's worse is that email addresses are ALWAYS tagged as email addresses when you import from CSV, regardless of the preference setting (this sounds like a bug to me).

YellowBox's suggestion to Paste and Match Style seems to be the only way to remove the links once they're added .

The adjunct to this is that the link only works if you click on the underlined text itself. Clicking in any white space in the cell activates the cell without triggering the email link. So selective/directed clicking may be your other option.

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