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Broken Hyperlinks in Outlook 2003

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13 replies

by willie11

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When I receive an email that contains a short hyperlink it works. When I receive an email that contains a long hyperlink Outlook breaks the link onto several lines. Only the first line is recognized as the link, the rest is just text.

If you click on the link it fails because you only get part of it. If you copy and paste the link it fails because it contains %20 characters at each line break.

If you edit the message to put the link back together (use backspace at the begining of each line) then the link opens correctly.

This is Outlook 2003 and IE-7 on Windows XP-Sp2.

Any suggestions for setup changes that will fix this??

Bill

13 replies

by greg

I have the same problem; that is how I found your thread. Does anybody have the answer?

by willie11

This even happens when I receive an email sent from Outlook 2003 on another machine to my Outlook 2003 on my machine. It also happens when I send a message with a long link from my Outlook 2003 to someone else using Outlook 2003. We don't use Exchange or anything so it is Outlook to the external email system back to Outlook.

by jellimonsta

Unfortunately, I do not believe you can unwrap long lines from with Outlook (you can with programs like Netscape or Eudora).
I would suggest you use websites such as http://www.tinyurl.com to shorten the URL as to make it clickable.

by suebewebs

When composing the email place angle brackets around the link This will force the email editor to read everything in between the <> as one line ....if there are no spaces.
As for you receivers well it might be that the company sending you the link (ie... UPS tracking numbers) hasn't seen this as an issue and has therefore not addressed it.
:)

by willie11

I just did a test by sending a link to myself with and without the <>. I made my window small so the link would be on more than one line.

The <> marks did the trick. The email I sent to myself displayed the link on two lines but it was a single link I could click on and it displayed the web page.

All these Geeks and you are the only one who came up with an answer that works.

Thanks.

Bill

by mlesniak

I also have a user with this problem and I tried adding the < to the start and > to the end of the link but it did not work.
Does any one else have a solution?

by willie11

That's a good idea. I'm just surprised that no one else has complained about this. I have searched at Microsoft and I can't find any mention of it at all.

by willie11

After a more extensive test I have found that the < > marks at the end of the hyperlink don't keep Outlook from spliting it so the last part is no longer considered a piece of the hyperlink.

Any other suggestions?

by willie11

I tried it also. It didn't work for me either. I am now using Outlook Express 6 and it doesn't seem to have this problem. I have tried to find information about this problem at Microsoft but it is just like it doesn't exist.

by bluewheelz

I have been messing with this problem for years. I finally figured a partial solution:
In Outlook 2003:
Tools ---> Options ---> Mail Format ---> Message Format/Internet Format Button ---> Under "Plain Text Options" type 132. It's the maximum allowed.

This doesn't completely fix the problem, but will fix it for most messages. If you could make it "0" it might stop it completely, but 30 is the lowest possible.

by grega711

Try these:

1. Check this email setting in Outlook 2003: Actions|Junk E-Mail|Junk E-Mail Options|Options Tab and then look at the last checkbox. More here: http://gregs-place.net/29/outlook-links.

2. Install IE8 from Safe Mode. I know, sounds like nothing, but it fixed a whole bunch of link and urlmon.dll-related errors that were driving me nuts and crippling my programs.

I didn't have IE8 installed, but if you do, try uninstalling it as completely as possible. Then do the reinstall. This tip saved me from having to do a clean re-install and losing a bunch of data and work.

Good luck

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