Outlook and Hyperlinks (Outlook 2000 SP-1)

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I get a newsletter update twice a month. I use Outlook 2000 to view it. It has many hyperlinks in it. The first hyperlink in the news letter reads http://www.ohiomoose.com[/url%5D I typed this one and it works. I copied this one and it gives an error message and does not connect you to the site http://www.ohiomoose.com[/url%5D. As you can see they both look the same right now but this is what the same link pasted in an Outlook 2000 note to the WEB master of that newsletter looked like http://www.ohiomoose.com [/url] I have no idea why it did not copy and paste the same in this Word document but never-the-less neither of the copied and pasted hyperlinks work. The one I type by hand does work but I don

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Just to clarify:

1. When you click the link as received in the newsletter, it works fine?
   • If so, proceed to item 2
   • If not, right-click the message and choose View Source and find the link. Delete everything after that paragraph, save the top part of the message source as a .txt file, and upload it to the Lounge for review.

jscher2000,

When I click the message in Outlook it produces the error message in my first post. I can’t get to the site from Outlook. Outlook is what the WEB master is blaming this on. Attached please find the txt file as you requested.

Thanks.

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It seems to me that the link should be to HTTP://www.ohiomoose.com instead of file://www.ohiomoose.com. This isn’t a problem that you can really fix, aside from knowing it’ll cause problems.

Perhaps the person who produces the newsletter can double-check and verify that ‘FILE’ is what is supposed to be there.

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smerdonk,

Here was his reply in bold before I posted my question in this forum. All the link shows in the original note is http://www.ohiomoose.com. It doesn’t show “http:” or “file:” as part of the link.

I have no idea, all the links work from here. I notice the content
below in brackets says
the file:// command tells your browser to
point to your local machine. All I can think of is that your mail
reader converted the link for some reason.

His second reply was, again, in bold below.

Could be an Outlook thing. Microsoft put out a lot of funny “security” fixes for Outlook

I don’t believe any more help is coming from him unless he hears from others with the same problem.

Thanks,

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well, it’s not the security, but something is adding file to the link. It might be on his end or your end… unless others have the same problem, it’s probably on your end.

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MJ,

I

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The heading of this message is so odd:

What does that mean? I thought the Generator was always the client?

“Converted from text/rtf format”

That sounds like a bad thing, like this newsletter might not really have been composed in HTML originally. I don’t know.

You think this is happening on your end? Maybe whatever converter this is resolves the ambiguous reference

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Jscher2000,

Thanks for your reply even though I

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If you view the source of a web page, the authoring program often inserts its name as the Generator. In a normal Outlook message, the tag looks like more or less this:

That’s why I was really surprised to see Exchange as the Generator.

Anyway, go ahead and forward any of my messages that you think will help.

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Isn’t the convention to list the NAME of the Meta tag first and then the CONTENT??

The NAME attribute specifies the property name.
The CONTENT attribute specifies the property value.

The “name” of the Meta tag is GENERATOR (meaning the program that created the file) and the “content” is MS Exchange Server — meaning that the HTML file was created by an MS Exchange Server. I don’t see any problem with that…

The HTML file seems to have been created FROM an RTF email by an Exchange Server. Either the Exchange Server or the author of the original RTF made an error. The anchor clearly should NOT have been “file”.

As to who made the error… My guess is the author. It seems unlikely that this is something done by your computer. However, are you on an Exchange Server?? Perhaps there is a bug in the ability for an Exchange Server to correctly convert RTF to HTML?

One would think this problem would have been caught before now…

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From the article Managing Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Organizations on TechNet, it does appear that Exchange can convert text and RTF to HTML (see Figures 11-2 and 11-3 and accompanying text.). The article is a bit complicated when discussing the interplay between the RTF and HTML settings; thankfully I don’t have an Exchange Server to experiment on.

Since the URL appears in the newsletter as only the host name, it probably was the Exchange server that built the faulty anchor tag. You would think that a service pack would have fixed this by now, but perhaps it is an extremely uncommon problem because most organizations force outgoing mail to plain text or leave the user’s choice of RTF undisturbed?? Will be interested to hear what comes back from the mooses.

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Rmrucker and Jscher2000,

I don

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Jeff – I agree. It could be an Exchange Server bug — but boy, one would think some one would have caught this by now…

As for the Name/Content positioning in the Meta tag:
It is my belief and experience that most HTML tags list the Name first and then the Content. However, NOT IN THIS CASE!! I just checked some HTML email that I received, and here are some of the Header information:

Note the atypical arrangement of the GENERATOR tag — where as the Content-Type tag (using ‘http-equiv’ in lieu of ‘name’) is in the usual order. This is exactly as you said. The order must not matter — but it is a little weird that MS chose to make this one Meta tag atypical…

hlewton – if you are not on an Exchange Server, then I wonder if the sender is. Could/would an out-bound email in RTF format be converted to HTML by the sender? If so, then ALL recipients should have received the bogus link…

Also, since some of the “Exchange” apparatus is part and parcel of Outlook, is this really a fuction of Outlook?? I don’t know. I will try and find out.

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Guys,

For what’s it’s worth, I sent the WEB master an email with a Word document as an attachment with a little explanation of our conversations in this forum. I also gave him the link to this site to read all the posts. Another attachment to the email note was the small text file Jeff had me attach to a post in this forum. He received a note with no attachments. So I tested it on a friend of mine and on 2 accounts my wife has, one here and one at her work place. In all three cases the attachments arrived intact. There were 3 different ISPs involved so I’m very certain it was not my ISP causing the WEB master to not get the attachments. I assume that the email to him is going to the same ISP as his newsletters are being posted from. I tried to send the same attachments to him again only this time I also attached the text that was inside both of them so if the attachments did reach him at least he could read what was in them.

Don’t know if any of this means anything but thought I’d continue the intrigue

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Jeff, headers like this:

Seem to be the standard for RTF messages convert to HTML by an Exchange Server. And it appears this is something typically done for people sending out newletters via distributed messaging. The page you linked to says it this way:

Provide Message Body As HTML — Exchange Server converts the message body to HTML (HyperText Markup Language). This allows compliant client applications to display the message body with graphics, hypertext links, and other elements. Clients that don’t support HTML, however, display the actual markup tags mixed in with the text, which can make the message difficult to read.

Given the fact that many people send out newsletters and many of them have links embedded in them, I think it must be highly unlikely that the MS Exchange server is making this mistake.

Doesn’t it just seem more logical that the author just made a mistake??

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I’m sure the author would have fessed up by now if he did.

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What do you think is more likely:

1) The author does not want to admit to his mistake
2) The MS Exchange Server that people have used MILLIONS of times world-wide actually puts the “file:” protocol instead of the “http:” protocol for its hyperlinks?

Got any money you would put behind that?? ;-]

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Here is the author’s reply. I believe I mentioned that he did not receive my attachments when all others I tested did. Thus the first part of the reply. I have heard nothing else. I don’t know if he checked out this forum or not.

Yes, I can receive attachments. My mail and the newsletter is produced as a standard e-mail message using Outlook XP, I have had no other comments on any errors using the newsletter except from you.

I will check and see if anything is amiss on this end

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Well I never heard from the WEB master on my hyperlink problem again. I suspected as much. Sorry I can’t report the reason for the mal-functioning hyperlink.

Again, thanks to all.

SIDE NOTE: The spell checker here at Woody’s Lounge is still acting strange. The first occurrence of “hyperlink” and this one show as being spelled wrong, while the 2nd occurrence above shows OK. All were created in this forum

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