Question : Problem: Does anyone know how to recover from Excel 2007 freezing ("waiting on an OLE") if you click on an email address that is a hyperlink?

One of my columns in Excel 2007 stores email addresses.  They are hyperlink objects.  Okay, I suppose I should strip the links to avoid the problem I am having but since I am working ina hurry I tend to leave them.  Unfortunately, if I accidentally click on one of these, Excel will become unuseable.  The screen does nothing for the longest time and then I receive the messae that "Excel is waiting for another application to complete an OLE action."  I am assuming it is supposedly waiting for an email program to load as if I had intended a mailto action but since I do not have a default mail program on my system, nothing loads and Excel does not recover. Task manager shows Excel as running but I cannot switch to. Invariably I shut down the program and lose changes since my last save.

Does anyone know how to dis-engage the "application" that Excel is waiting on so that the program can resume?  I'm trying to figure out what in the system processes controls that or some other go-around.  Thank you.

Answer : Problem: Does anyone know how to recover from Excel 2007 freezing ("waiting on an OLE") if you click on an email address that is a hyperlink?

HI, seriousnick.  Wow, you opened up a whole new area for editing.  It doesn't fix a freeze after it occurs; however, it taught me how to create a personal.xls(b) file and that is where I stored the cool macro (sub) you provided the code for.  I tried it and it works like a charm.  The only catch is this macro runs on the entire worksheet and does not limit to a selected cell range.   I discovered a simple way of removing the hyperlinks on a selected range of cells is to use the eraser tool (Clear) to clear all formatting.  The hyperlink attribute is considered a format enhancement (go figure) and so this converts to plain text.  Thank you so much. I will use your macro and some of the other nuggets from your post.