Every now and again we get a question that goes like this: “I'm not sure what button combo I hit, but I can no longer type Web addresses or e-mails in Microsoft Outlook without it turning into a bunch of code. For example, www.msn.com automatically converts to {HYPERLINK "http://www.msn.com"} “

The button combo you hit was Alt+F9. This is the shortcut to show and hide field codes. It’s helpful view the codes when you are doing a mail merge or working on a document with a large number of fields, but not as helpful in email.