Since it is only happening with some links, I would first suspect the links themselves. Sometimes links have a lot of extra characters that I think come sometimes when google was used to get to the link.

Try pasting some “clean” links into your doc and see if they work ok.

WSjaylin wrote:

I have a document with many hyperlinks to websites. Some of them open my default browser Chrome instantly others cause Word to display (not responding) and take more than a minute to finally open the browser and restore functionality to Word.  I tried unlinking and recopying the url. Any suggestions? THANKS!

Test a slow link to see if it is Chrome and the web site or Word:
Highlight the slow hyperlink, right click, and select Edit Hyperlink.
The Edit Hyperlink window will open with the address to the link highlighted at the bottom of the window in the box labeled Address. Copy this Address.
Open Chrome and paste the address into the address bar and press the Enter key.
See how long it takes Chrome to open that web site without Word involved.

Clicking a link in Word is no different than clicking a link in Chrome’s Bookmarks other than the opening of the Chrome App being the only difference.

WSjaylin wrote:

I created a new Word document and pasted the link and the same thing happens.  Opens instantly when pasted directly into Chrome. Hmm…

There are several things that could cause that which I discuss below:
#1 – Not sure of your setup, but with some setups turning this setting on resolves the problem. Open Word, go to Word Options (press/release these keys in this order: Alt, F, T). Refer to the image below. Select the Advanced Tab. Scroll down to the Save section and click to turn on Copy remotely store files onto your computer, and update the remote file when saving. Click OK to save your changes. Close all documents and Word to see if this change fixes the problem when Word opens again.

#2 – Is this setup a Private individual use and not a company that uses AD SF? If you use AD SF, let me know.

#3 – Close all documents and Word. Press WinKey + R to open a run box. Enter winword.exe /safe (note the space before the /) and press the Enter key. This opens Word in safe mode. Use the Open document function in this Safe mode Word to open that document and test the hyperlink (Word will revert to the Ctrl + Click to activate the link). Any difference?

#4 – Deactivate all security software just long enough to test a hyperlink. Any Change?

#5 – Shutdown Windows and restart in safe mode. Any Difference.

Hopefully one of these actions fixes or gives insight as to what is causing this.

WSjaylin wrote:

#5 Word wouldn’t run with Windows in Safe Mode.  (license could not be verified).

Sorry, forgot to tell you to go to Safe mode with Networking.

WSjaylin wrote:

I really appreciate your help, but at this point it just may be easier to manually go to the sites directly from Chrome.

All I can offered instead is to save the Word document as a Web page (*.htm;*html) file.  When you open that document it will open as a separate tab in the Chrome browser.  Right click any link in the document/web page and open a new tab to that web page which will load quickly in already open Chrome.