Copying via the eyedropper tool would be an effective solution.

There is a workaround. MS Word has the ability to copy paste links, therefore, create a Word document pasting all the links you need, save it and place it into your InDesign document.

They need to fix this

I agree, this is the dumbest thing that you can't copy boxes from one document to another, it's very inconsistent.

Not the best workaround, but it works. If you export the file as an RTF file, you can copy what you need and paste it into another program with links working. e.g. I need to be able to copy tables with hyperlinks from InDesign to Outlook. There does not seem to be a way to do this without losing all of the links. When I output it as an RTF and open it in word, I can copy the table, links and all, and paste it into Outlook with the links still working.

The only other way is to export as a pdf and select the option to include hyperlinks. Then you can just attach the PDF to your email.

For me, the first option works best as I don't need to include an attachment. It is an extra step, but it works and I can still use InDesign instead of Word.

I hope this helps someone out there.

Adobe: Please, Pleeeaaase fix this. It is important to a lot of people.

(Microsoft Word hater)

I do agree. There must be a feature to copy and paste hyperlinks.

there is an option now preferences > clipboard handling.

this has been the bane of my teams lives recently. i'm finding so many glitches in Adobe CC this year — this being one of them

What I do to bypass this issue is to place the document that contains hyperlinks to a new document or create a new text frame in the pasteboard of the existing document I am working on and place the text in the text frame.

When placing, I make sure the "Show Import Option" is checked and then I use the "Preserve Styles and Formatting from Text and Tables" option.

This will keep all hyperlinks in the text I want to copy. Before I copy, I ensure that I apply the Paragraph style I want to use on the text and put it to the font size if it is not in the original font size of the syle. This is to ensure that the hyperlinks remain highlighted.

I hope this helps.

I agree, i am working on a project now that involves copy pasting hyperlinked txt from word, and it is indeed extremely tedious

It is not an improvement to my opinion!
The lack of beeing able to copy a link is definitive a bug which needs to be fixed urgent!

I would add to this that if you have a button which goes to a URL and then subsequently create a hyperlink in the hyperlinks panel which is assigned to that button; when you try to copy the button (either Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V or Alt-drag) the new button appears in the layers panel but it has no appearance/content. If you first remove the Hyperlink from the panel (but retain the URL action in the button panel) the button copies with it's content and appearance. Although some of the show/hide button states disappear.

The long and short of it Adobe, InDesign's interactivity seems like you're paying lip-service but not really providing a complete solution.

Can you just go and buy AJAR Productions and employ Justin, so that you can integrate in5's awesome features and hopefully along the way fix some of this PDF/SWF/HTML interactive spaghetti.