hyperref or equivalent - I just want to generate clickable external links

Question

I am hoping this is an easy question with a straightforward answer, but I have been poking around for a while now and I haven't seen any instructions for how to do this:

I just want to add clickable links for URLs, I don't want to generate internal links at all. I have just installed hyperref, and I was hoping there was some nice option called "urlonly" or something but I can't see it.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\section{This is a section, but I don't want a link in the toc}
I want this link to work. \href{http://news.bbc.co.uk}{BBC news}
\end{document}

Can anyone tell me how to do this?

Answer 1

I am enclosing my patch. I am partly executing the draft option as defined in the hyperref.sty file from the hyperref bundle with two key lines commented out.

%! *latex mal-hyperlinks.tex
\documentclass{article}
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
% Patch: draft option do all this:
\makeatletter
    \let\hyper@@anchor\@gobble
    \gdef\hyper@link#1#2#3{#3\Hy@xspace@end}%
    \def\hyper@anchorstart#1#2{#2\Hy@xspace@end}%
    \def\hyper@anchorend{\Hy@xspace@end}%
    \let\hyper@linkstart\@gobbletwo
    \def\hyper@linkend{\Hy@xspace@end}%
    % \def\hyper@linkurl#1#2{#1\Hy@xspace@end}%
    \def\hyper@linkfile#1#2#3{#1\Hy@xspace@end}%
    % \def\hyper@link@[#1]#2#3#4{#4\Hy@xspace@end}%
    \def\Acrobatmenu#1#2{\leavevmode#2\Hy@xspace@end}%
    \let\PDF@SetupDoc\@empty
    \let\PDF@FinishDoc\@empty
    \let\@fifthoffive\@secondoftwo
    \let\@secondoffive\@secondoftwo
    \let\ReadBookmarks\relax
    \let\WriteBookmarks\relax
    \Hy@WarningNoLine{Draft mode on}%
\makeatother
% End of patch...
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\section{This is a section, but I don't want a link in the toc}
\label{test}Cross-reference~\ref{test} on page~\pageref{test}. Cited book is~\cite{mybook}.\par
I want this link to work. \href{http://news.bbc.co.uk/}{BBC news}
\begin{thebibliography}{9}
\bibitem{mybook} A book about\ldots
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}

Answer 2

A partial answer to my own question: I use cleveref and I only just noticed the part of the documentation that says to use the starred variants \cref*{}when combining with `hyperref if you don't want the references to generate links.

I doubt this would have helped solve my MWE though, as I am sure the table of contents works differently, but I thought it would potentially help others in my position to know that most of my internal linking issues could have been fixed with this answer!