Can't download link target

[Charles]

I am using Word 2008 version 12.2.3 (OS X 10.6.2). S

Sometimes in a .doc, when I insert a download link in the form
"http://www.servername/filename.zip", if I click on it, Word says it is
loading the document but when the progress bar finishes, I get an error
message, "Unable to open http://www.servername/filename.zip. Cannot
download the information you requested."

Other URLs that link to a Web page instead of a download work fine, and
the download-link URL works fine if I copy and paste it into a Web
browser.

Any solution?

Thank you,

Charles

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Charles:

No solution to that. Word is a very limited "web browser" and it is trying
to open the file, which it can't do.

Try "file://www.servername/filename.zip" to hand the file out to OS X
instead. If OS X can handle the destination file, it will hand it off to
the correct application.

Cheers

I am using Word 2008 version 12.2.3 (OS X 10.6.2). S

Sometimes in a .doc, when I insert a download link in the form
"http://www.servername/filename.zip", if I click on it, Word says it is
loading the document but when the progress bar finishes, I get an error
message, "Unable to open http://www.servername/filename.zip. Cannot
download the information you requested."

Other URLs that link to a Web page instead of a download work fine, and
the download-link URL works fine if I copy and paste it into a Web
browser.

Any solution?

Thank you,

Charles

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Charles]

No solution to that. Word is a very limited "web browser" and it is trying
to open the file, which it can't do.

Try "file://www.servername/filename.zip" to hand the file out to OS X
instead. If OS X can handle the destination file, it will hand it off to
the correct application.

Thank you for this info.

I seem to remember that I had previously been able to use such links,
though--is this something new with Word 2008? Also, a Windows user I
sent the Word doc to was able to use the download link with no problem.
Will other Windows users be able to use the "file://" format?

Charles

 

[John McGhie]

HI Charles:

Yeah, in Windows it will work just fine, without the "File" format.

In Mac Word, whether it works or not depends on your system.

The following two URLs work for me in a Word document:

http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/PC/PC6/RBE_150_09.pdf

http://www.ed.gov/programs/titleiparta/parentinvguid.doc

But when you paste out of a browser, you have to be careful to paste the
actual URL from the Address Bar of the browser, not the converted one from
the body of a search result. You have to be careful not to paste in URLs
where the control characters have been converted to hexadecimal, because Mac
browsers are rather literal-minded, they do not allow hex in the address
bar.

So this URL:

http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/PC/PC6/RBE_150_09.pdf copied from the
browser will work.

This one, copied from Google with all the tracking junk in it, will not:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=3&ved=0CBoQFjAC&url=htt
p%3A%2F%2Fwww.ed.gov%2Fprograms%2Ftitleiparta%2Fparentinvguid.doc&ei=VnZJS6P
3LJLEsQOntfD1Dw&usg=AFQjCNH8hnKY5bEZE0Us5NqewDhwehPHZw&sig2=Ef7hJ9A7_pFLCuR3
pMCXSQ

You can see how I stripped it back in the second example.

Cheers

Thank you for this info.

I seem to remember that I had previously been able to use such links,
though--is this something new with Word 2008? Also, a Windows user I
sent the Word doc to was able to use the download link with no problem.
Will other Windows users be able to use the "file://" format?

Charles

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Charles]

Yeah, in Windows it will work just fine, without the "File" format.

In Mac Word, whether it works or not depends on your system.

The following two URLs work for me in a Word document:

http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/PC/PC6/RBE_150_09.pdf

http://www.ed.gov/programs/titleiparta/parentinvguid.doc

But when you paste out of a browser, you have to be careful to paste the
actual URL from the Address Bar of the browser, not the converted one from
the body of a search result. You have to be careful not to paste in URLs
where the control characters have been converted to hexadecimal, because Mac
browsers are rather literal-minded, they do not allow hex in the address
bar.

When I create a new .docx and insert the two links above, they work
fine, as does the one I have been having problems with. The two links
also work fine in the .doc where the problem link is.

I have tried retyping the problem link (I haven't been pasting from a
browser) but it still doesn't work. I have checked it by copying and
pasting it into a browsers, where it works fine.

Charles

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Charles:

It is possible that a Hyperlink Base has been defined in the problem
document.

If it has, you will need to Maggie it to remove it, since the Hyperlink Base
control is not revealed in Word 2008.

The Maggie:

1. Create a new blank document
2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last
paragraph mark
3. Copy it.
4. Paste in the new document.
5. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open.

This technique for de-corrupting is known as "Doing a 'Maggie'", after
Margaret Secara from the TECHWR-L mailing list, who first publicised the
technique.

Cheers

When I create a new .docx and insert the two links above, they work
fine, as does the one I have been having problems with. The two links
also work fine in the .doc where the problem link is.

I have tried retyping the problem link (I haven't been pasting from a
browser) but it still doesn't work. I have checked it by copying and
pasting it into a browsers, where it works fine.

Charles

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Charles]

It is possible that a Hyperlink Base has been defined in the problem
document.

If it has, you will need to Maggie it to remove it, since the Hyperlink Base
control is not revealed in Word 2008.

The Maggie:

1. Create a new blank document
2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last
paragraph mark
3. Copy it.
4. Paste in the new document.
5. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open.

Thank you for this suggestion, which unfortunately did not work, though,
so I am still looking for a solution, assuming there is one.

Charles

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I'm not sure it helps, but if I insert a link to a .zip (a small one, as
it happens) and click it in Word 2008, what happens depends on which
browser I happen to have set up as the default. Here I have 3 candidates:
a. Safari treats the .zip as if it were a binary file and displays the
content. Useless, as it stands. Perhaps there is a simple way to get it
to do something more helpful
b. Camino initiates and completes the download
c. Opera (I hadn't even realised there was a copy on this machine)
prompts for the download, then does it.

What I'm wondering is whether for example
a. the default browser you are using is set up to do something else
altogether
b. the default browser pops up some dialog that you don't see (I think
on a Mac you'd probably see that dialog eventually, though)
c. its a big .zip and something "times out"

If you have other browsers it could be worth trying to set them as the
default and see what happens (mostly there appears to be a facility in
the browser's preferences).

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

 

[Charles]

I'm not sure it helps, but if I insert a link to a .zip (a small one, as
it happens) and click it in Word 2008, what happens depends on which
browser I happen to have set up as the default. Here I have 3 candidates:
a. Safari treats the .zip as if it were a binary file and displays the
content. Useless, as it stands. Perhaps there is a simple way to get it
to do something more helpful
b. Camino initiates and completes the download
c. Opera (I hadn't even realised there was a copy on this machine)
prompts for the download, then does it.

What I'm wondering is whether for example
a. the default browser you are using is set up to do something else
altogether
b. the default browser pops up some dialog that you don't see (I think
on a Mac you'd probably see that dialog eventually, though)
c. its a big .zip and something "times out"

If you have other browsers it could be worth trying to set them as the
default and see what happens (mostly there appears to be a facility in
the browser's preferences).

I appreciate your help--

I am also using Word 2008 (OS X 10.6.2), but I seem to recall that this
happened from time to time with previous versions of Word and the OS X.
(Not sure if it also happened with System 9.) Camino is my default
browser. I have also tried Firefox and Safari, but it doesn't seem to
make a difference.

As I mentioned in an earlier message, some links seem to work fine and
others don't. I haven't been able to determine a pattern.

Charles

 

[Peter Jamieson]

I did have a further look at this, but nothing definitive emerged.

Looking at the log of an Apache webserver, I can see that first of all
it sees and responds to a GET request made by Word. If the ZIP file is
large, you can see a progress bar at the bottom of the Word Window. It
seems that only when Word has received the entire file does it decide
what to do with it (I guess that could be investigated a bit further). I
then see a similar request and response from whichever browser is set up
to be the default on the Mac. The only difference is the identification
of the browser in the header.

If I try to get a really large ZIP from Word, it looks to me as if Word
times out - the progress bar goes a certain distance, then sticks. You
can close the document and still see the progress bar, which only
disappears when you quit Word.

Since progress speed would be affected by file size, network performance
and the performance of the web server, that might be enough to explain
why /some/ requests succeed and others fail - it's also possible that
some /servers/ time out and give up trying to serve the file. If I knew
how to replicate that behaviour here I'd probably try it.

The other main possibe difference would be that different servers
specify different content types for .zip files, and Word does something
different as a result. But I'd be surprised if many servers out there
used a different type from applicaiton/zip for .zip files.

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk