Ghost Hyperlinks imported from Word

"I can see the hyperlink around the text when I look at the text in Story editor but I can't target the hyperlink without deleting the entire text it is attached to."

Hi Erica,

what you could do: Copy/paste the text to a new document.

When this new document is the active document you could run the following ExtensScript (JavaScript) script:

var doc = app.documents[0];
doc.hyperlinks.everyItem().remove(); // PERHAPS OPTIONAL
doc.hyperlinkTextSources.everyItem().remove();

Here a sample screenshot from my German InDesign 2021 before running the script:

After running the script:

When done copy/paste the formatted text back to the original document.

Optional: Also remove a possibly applied character style from the previous hyperlink text source. Select the text and check the Character Styles panel.

How to save ExtendScript code to a script file, install the script file and run the script from InDesign's Scripts panel, see:

https://www.indiscripts.com/pages/help#hd0sb2

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

How about opening the Word document and deleting the hyperlinks there, then reimport the Word file?

It may be some Word hyperlink attribute that InDesign isn't capable of handling.