Disable, Uninstall and Remove Skype Add-On Call This Phone Number on Web Page and Toolbar Plugin Menu in IE
When browse web pages with phone number on it, you may notice that the phone number has been highlighted and embedded in Skype code as colorful option-selectable button, preceding with country flag. If you hover the mouse pointer over the phone number button, you will read that the button allows you to call this phone number in the country with Skype, while the flag allows you to change country code. The change to phone number on webpages, together with a Skype drop-down menu on the menu toolbar or command bar is a feature of Skype.
Other than above changes, when visiting a web page with phone number on Windows Vista, users may prompt with a Internet Explorer Warning dialog window saying “A website wants to open web content using this program on your computer” with the program name identified as “Skype, Take a deep breath” and publisher as “Skype Technologies SA”. The warning appear due to the program will have to be opened outside Protected Mode, a security feature of IE7 in Vista, and users must specifically allows the act to continue by clicking on “Allow” button or stop the Skype integration with IE by pressing “Don’t Allow”.
Skype bundles the Skype add-in for Internet Explorer with the Skype client in order provides users with convenient way to initiate phone calls directly from the web pages by clicking on the highlighted phone number itself, which will launch Skype to dial the number. This shortcut to dial saves users from having to copy and paste or remember the telephone number and type the number in Skype interface.
You may not like this feature and want to see the phone number in its ordinary normal form instead of highlighted by Skype, especially for users who seldom use Skype to make outgoing SkypeOut call to ordinary phone. (Note that your IE crashes due to Skype add-in, which applicable to both IE7 on Vista and IE6/IE7 on XP, you should upgrade to latest version of Skype, which comes with latest version of Skype IE plugin). If you want to disable the highlight of phone number of web pages when viewed in Internet Explorer browser, you can uninstall and remove the Skype IE plugin.
How to Remove and Uninstall Skype Add-On for IE
Uninstall the Skype IE add-in by clicking on Remove Skype add-on for IE from the Skype plugin menu located on IE command bar or toolbar as shown in the figure below:
Sometimes the IE’s Skype add-on menu may be hidden due to space constraint. If you cannot find button with Skype logo, try to click on the rightmost arrow to expand the menu. If you choose to un-install the the add-in plugin, Skype will remember the preference and will not try to install the IE add-on again on future install or upgrade. To install the Skype IE plugin or add-on again, you will need to specifically tell the Skype installer to include Install Skype Plugin for Internet Explorer option as shown in the figure below:
Apparently the built-in Skype IE Plugin remover is little buggy, as on some system, performing step above to uninstall and remove Skype IE plugin is not enough to get rid of the add-on and/or the menu button in the IE’s menu bar or toolbar. If there is still trace of Skype add-on still has hooks into Internet Explorer, try to use the following command to completely remove all references and hooks of Skype in IE by unregistering Skype IE Plug-in from the IE toolbar. In Vista, use an elevated command prompt. Close all IE windows before running the command.
regsvr32 /u “c:\Program Files\Skype\Toolbars\Internet Explorer\SkypeIEPlugin.dll
Still the Skype IE Plugin still persistent on your system, go to Internet Explorer, click on Tools -> Manage Add-ons -> Enable or Disable Add-ons”. In the Manage Add-ons diaglo, disable all Skype items found, namely Skype and Skype add-in (mastermind).
One last step is to search for SkypeIEPlugin.dll file (normally located in c:\Program Files\Skype\Toolbars\Internet Explorer\ folder) on your computer and delete the file. Again, close all Internet Explorer windows before deleting the file otherwise the file will be locked.
Once the Skype IE Plugin is unhooked from IE and uninstalled, the phone number on web pages will appear as normal text again, and the Skype menu on Command Bar or toolbar is removed.
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Entries (RSS)
July 11th, 2009 23:57
je veus supprimer mon skype
May 14th, 2009 16:48
[...] http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/10/10/disable-uninstall-and-remove-skype-add-on-call-this-phone-n…References : [...]
April 22nd, 2009 02:00
Skype totally corrupted the HTML on a web site including a page of contact phone numbers that I was updating via a web-browser HTML editor (on sites.google.com/site ).
Now all the phone numbers are only visible if one over hangs the mouse over what’s left of the phone numbers. And that visbility lasts only a few seconds. So I had to retype the whole address list ….
What a piece of crapware.
This does not seem to be a recoverable error. My HTML code is now full of junk like:
<img name=”skype_tb_img_a0″ …. …. <span title=”Call this phone number in United States of America with Skype: + ….
February 12th, 2009 10:12
To disable number highlighting in Firefox, just go to:
Tools > Add-ons
You will see ‘Skype extension for Firefox’
Disable it and you’re done.
February 6th, 2009 11:37
What an annoying piece of crap. Skype is becoming like adobe. I had 100 tabs open in FF and skype plugin was causing it to hang a lot. (”A script is taking too long to respond.. skype_ff_toolbar”). Finally I found the culprit.
Now when I wanted to uninstall, it asked me to (1) restart firefox (goodbye tabs!)
(2) restart windows (goodbye all open windows!)
What an intrusive piece of worthless crapware!!!
I have had it with skype. I am going to officially stop using skype from now on just because of this worthless toolbar.
January 9th, 2009 21:04
Thanks for this info.
January 7th, 2009 18:13
Thankyou so much that stupid skype addon was a total pest and hinderance. Thx again
September 10th, 2008 19:07
Perfect! Just the amswer I was looking for!
Thanks!
August 14th, 2008 05:48
This was great help, couldn’t do anything without calling people randomly
August 5th, 2008 13:22
Thank you for being so clear!
July 31st, 2008 03:03
THANK YOU VERY MUCH for posting this – I have installed and uninstalled Skype several times because I couldn’t get this to “go away”. THANK YOU!!!!
July 17th, 2008 17:33
Thank you for posting above info. The add-on made me swear a lot when editing a joomla-site; it kept altering the html in my text.
July 9th, 2008 23:43
For FireFox users, I would recommend that they uninstall a similar skype phone number highlighting add-on/plugin for FireFox. I found that I was not able to access PDF files with FireFox after I got this plugin. The plugin clearly gets confused by the PDF format and somehow forces the browser to repeatedly reconnect and download the PDF and thus basically cause the browser to hang.
February 7th, 2008 01:59
I have just spent all afternoon trying to understand why IE hangs when I try to run MS Update and eventualy arrived at the same conclusion — Skype Add-ons. I am running the latest 3.6.0.248 on XP with all the latest patches and still getting the same problem. The only solution I can find is to disable the Skype add-ons.
December 18th, 2007 02:33
izvenite no nam nado sdelat test
vi ved ne bydete protiv admini