14May Stop Skype hijacking phone numbers in IE!
HEAPS of people use Skype. If you’re one of the people that don’t use it to make calls directly from your machine you might want to turn off the feature that highlights phone numbers in IE so they’re clickable. If you’re one of those people, read on …
In Internet Explorer there is an additional button for Skype on the toolbar - it’s added when you install Skype. If you can’t see the button it might be missing due to space constraints. If you can’t see it, click the » button on your toolbar - the Skype menu should then be visible.
Once you’ve found this menu, select the "Remove Skype add-on for IE " option. This will launch the Skype installation program and allow you to remove the add-on (IE will need to be closed for the installation to complete properly).
If this worked for you then you can stop reading. If it didn’t work, read on …
Occasionally this add/remove feature doesn’t work too well due to a couple of bugs. If you find this option hasn’t worked for you, enter the following command in a command prompt window. Note that you’ll need to do this in an elevated-privileges command prompt if you’re running Windows Vista and while logged in as an administrative user if you’re running Windows XP/2000.
Note: This command assumes you’ve installed Skype into the default location, i.e. C:\Program Files\Skype\
At this point the plugin will still be active on your system and there are a couple more steps you’ll need to complete.
- Click Tools | Manage Add-ons | Enable or Disable Add-ons”
- From the Manage Add-ons dialog disable all Skype items you can find. These should be called Skype and Skype add-in (mastermind)
- Make sure all Internet Explorer windows are completely closed and that there are are no iexplore.exe processes hanging around
- Search for then delete the SkypeIEPlugin.dll file. If you installed Skype in the default location this should be located in C:\Program Files\Skype\Toolbars\Internet Explorer\ folder.) on your computer and delete the file.
From now on phone numbers should revert back to the website’s font & style.
