I have been running into the same problem lately with a couple of different programs. The root of the problem to me seems to be programs that are trying to figure out what I want to do and give it to me. Now, I will be one of the first to admit that I think computers should make our lives easier but when the technology starts to do something that I have specifically tried not to do then I have a problem. The specific problem that is bugging me lately is the number of programs that look at my text, see something that looks like a URL or e-mail address, and makes a hyperlink out of it. You can see the behavior by opening up Word and typing in the URL to your favorite site or this blog if you can't think of anything else and you will see it underlined and in blue text. Hovering over the new link will bring up the tool tip to prompt you to click on the link and go to the web site. Also if you type in something with an @ sign in the word (like some passwords) it treats it as an e-mail.

The program that is causing me the most heartburn at this time is Adobe Reader. I have a client that has created many PDF documents with a URL in the text. Before version 7 it treated the text as we created it in the document and it displayed it as text. In an effort to help us Adobe has decided to make the text a hyperlink. The problem is that the URL is long and wraps to a second line. The "automatic" URL doesn't take this into effect and so the "link" is broken. We have had to license a different version of the control and I will need to make the URL into a real hyperlink that included the entire URL so it isn't broken any more.

For the record, I haven't tested every reader out there but the FoxIt Reader from foxitsoftware.com doesn't add in the spurious hyperlink. Also opening the PDF in notepad will show the format of the document without the hyperlink so I am pretty sure that Adobe is the one to blame.