In proposals at my job, we cross-reference captions in the text callouts. Captions use the label "Figure" and then auto-numbering, both picked up by the cross-references. However, when the cross-reference word "figure" does not begin a sentence, as in

As shown in figure 3, ...

our style is to use the lower-case f. When updating the document (or printing, despite unchecking the relevant links options), the lower case changes back to upper case.
My goal is to be able, when the document is final, to remove the links from the cross-references to the captions, so that I can search/replace for the one's that don't start sentences, replacing the F in Figure with f. (It's unusual to have more than 50 such, and this takes me just a few minutes.)
Since using Ctrl+A and Ctrl+Shift+F9 also removes the caption and any other hyperlinks in what can sometimes be a very lengthy document, this is not a solution. I'd like to have a macro that can remove only the cross-reference fields for captions. Perhaps it could target caption cross-references; perhaps just the word cross-referenced word Figure.
I suspect it could be a fairly simple macro. Help greatly appreciated, as always.