Locate Link Browser

[Ron Gallimore]

Whenever I click on certain links the famous Locate Link Browser window
appears. I have tried to open the same message on three different computer
and get the same result. What I noticed is that some of the links come in
with the http:// already attached to the URL and those open fine but the
others were not coded with the http:// so they show only outbind:// . The
outbind links are the ones that are failing. I have tried
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/firefox.htm,
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...opup-dialog-when-clicking-on-links-in-outlook,
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821692/en-us and many others but they have
not worked. I have also tried to reset the Internet Explorer settings and
Default browser settings but that did not work either. Any other suggestions
other than upgrade to 2007. For what it is worth, the links work just fine
in Outlook 2007.

My computer specs are below and they are all failing on the outbind issue
They are all running Outlook 2003 attached to Exchange 2003 on XP SP3
machines.
#1: Internet Explorer 8
#2: Internet Explorer 7
#3: Internet Explorer 7 & Firefox 3.0.13

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Because it only affects some messages, the links you found won't help - the
problem is not with the computer but with the message.

When there is no <handler>:// in an URL, browsers assume that the link is
relative to the path it is currently reading from. In your case, since the
link code is not formatted with an href tag, the Outlook assumes this is
relative to the mailbox it is reading it in and tacks on the handler it
uses, which is outbind://

So... either the url is incomplete or was corrupted by an antivirus/antispam
scanner.


--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

Let's Really Fix Outlook 2010
http://forums.slipstick.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34

 

[Ron Gallimore]

Is there any way to make the links open like they do in Outlook 2007?

Ron

Because it only affects some messages, the links you found won't help - the
problem is not with the computer but with the message.

When there is no <handler>:// in an URL, browsers assume that the link is
relative to the path it is currently reading from. In your case, since the
link code is not formatted with an href tag, the Outlook assumes this is
relative to the mailbox it is reading it in and tacks on the handler it
uses, which is outbind://

So... either the url is incomplete or was corrupted by an antivirus/antispam
scanner.


--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

Let's Really Fix Outlook 2010
http://forums.slipstick.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34

Whenever I click on certain links the famous Locate Link Browser window
appears. I have tried to open the same message on three different
computer
and get the same result. What I noticed is that some of the links come in
with the http:// already attached to the URL and those open fine but the
others were not coded with the http:// so they show only outbind:// . The
outbind links are the ones that are failing. I have tried
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/firefox.htm,
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...opup-dialog-when-clicking-on-links-in-outlook,
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821692/en-us and many others but they have
not worked. I have also tried to reset the Internet Explorer settings and
Default browser settings but that did not work either. Any other
suggestions
other than upgrade to 2007. For what it is worth, the links work just
fine
in Outlook 2007.

My computer specs are below and they are all failing on the outbind issue
They are all running Outlook 2003 attached to Exchange 2003 on XP SP3
machines.
#1: Internet Explorer 8
#2: Internet Explorer 7
#3: Internet Explorer 7 & Firefox 3.0.13

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

AFAIK, no, you can't change the behavior.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

Let's Really Fix Outlook 2010
http://forums.slipstick.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34

Is there any way to make the links open like they do in Outlook 2007?

Ron

Because it only affects some messages, the links you found won't help -
the
problem is not with the computer but with the message.

When there is no <handler>:// in an URL, browsers assume that the link is
relative to the path it is currently reading from. In your case, since
the
link code is not formatted with an href tag, the Outlook assumes this is
relative to the mailbox it is reading it in and tacks on the handler it
uses, which is outbind://

So... either the url is incomplete or was corrupted by an
antivirus/antispam
scanner.


--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

Let's Really Fix Outlook 2010
http://forums.slipstick.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34

Whenever I click on certain links the famous Locate Link Browser window
appears. I have tried to open the same message on three different
computer
and get the same result. What I noticed is that some of the links come
in
with the http:// already attached to the URL and those open fine but
the
others were not coded with the http:// so they show only outbind:// .
The
outbind links are the ones that are failing. I have tried
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/firefox.htm,
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...opup-dialog-when-clicking-on-links-in-outlook,
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821692/en-us and many others but they
have
not worked. I have also tried to reset the Internet Explorer settings
and
Default browser settings but that did not work either. Any other
suggestions
other than upgrade to 2007. For what it is worth, the links work just
fine
in Outlook 2007.

My computer specs are below and they are all failing on the outbind
issue
They are all running Outlook 2003 attached to Exchange 2003 on XP SP3
machines.
#1: Internet Explorer 8
#2: Internet Explorer 7
#3: Internet Explorer 7 & Firefox 3.0.13

 

[VanguardLH]

Whenever I click on certain links the famous Locate Link Browser window
appears.

I don't know error messages by some vague "famous" description. Helps
to actually show the error message itself.

I have tried to open the same message on three different computer
and get the same result. What I noticed is that some of the links come in
with the http:// already attached to the URL and those open fine but the
others were not coded with the http:// so they show only outbind:// . The
outbind links are the ones that are failing.

Did those URLs not have anything prefixed to them for the protocol
handler? That is, did they look like:

://domain.tld/path?args

or

//domain.tld/path?args

or did they look like

domain.tld/path?args

I'm not talking about what YOU see when reading an HTML-formatted e-mail
but what is actually specified as the href value in the <A> tag. You'll
have to look at the raw source of the e-mail to see what is the actual
URL in an HTML-formatted e-mail (since it wouldn't be a problem of
seeing what are the actual URLs in a plain-text e-mail).

<A href="scheme://host.domain.tld" ...>URLstring</A>
|______________________| |_______|
| |
This is the real URL ___| |
This is what you see when rendered as HTML __|

So it could be your sender is screwing up their URLs by only partial
specifying the prefix for the URL scheme. Another cause is an
excessively long URL (one that exceeds 512 bytes in length). See:

http://blogs.msdn.com/pcreehan/arch...utlook-2003-doesn-t-display-my-html-body.aspx
(At the time I found this, Microsoft's blog server was flaky so I don't
know if you can see this article.)

Senders really shouldn't be including URLs that are over 70-80
characters in length. They have no idea if the recipient's e-mail
client can handle long URLs. The result is that the recipient might end
up with a URL that is sliced apart which means they have to paste it
back together. For really long URLs, use tinyurl.com or other such
online services to generate a much shorter redirect URL to the same path
as the original overly long URL.

The above article claims that 512 bytes is the maximum for a URL in
Outlook. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/208427 says the maximum length
in IE is 2083 characters (and I've hit URLs that were longer than this
and caused problems in IE). So maybe the 512-byte max is a limit just
inside of Outlook.

Another cause of seeing the outbind scheme in an URL is that the sender
composed or copied an HTML web page that uses relative links inside of
it. Outlook isn't a web browser. It's an e-mail client. While Outlook
supports some HTML, it doesn't support it all. What looks good in a web
page may not be usable when rendered inside of Outlook. The outbind
pointers are trying to point at positions within the current document
inside of Outlook's message store for the relative links (anchors) that
were used in the web page. Typically the relative links are used for
quick navigation around the current web page, like snapping you back to
a known place in the web page (top of page is common). A sender should
never expect any e-mail client to have the full functionality of a web
browser.

outbind:// means Outlook is pointing to somewhere inside its own message
store, not as a link to some outside server. If it was supposed to be a
URL to some site, you'll have to look inside the HTML code to see what
was the value for the href attribute in the <A> tag. If it was a
relative link to bounce around inside a web page, just scroll Outlook to
see that part.

 

[Ron Gallimore]

VanguardLH,

I am surprised you have never heard of this error. It is quite frequent in
the older Outlook programs. Basically, when you click a link and Outlook
does no know how to handle it, a dialog box pops up (Locate Link Browser) and
you are suppose to direct it to your web browser. Doing this however causes
a bunch more problems.

The URLs are formatted as domain.tld/path?args which Outlook 2007 can handle
and the links open just fine. Outlook 2003 apparently cannot handle these
and the Locate Link Browser dialog box opens. My original question was
looking for a solution or workaround for the 2003 issue. Unfortunately I
cannot ask the sender to change it because it is a worldwide company and is
being generated by their SAP system.

Ron