How to fix link to file server in outlook

Question

Hello,

We have a company file server where we share files and other work-related documents. The server is local and up until 24 hours ago, I could share a link to the file server in my Outlook with colleagues and open the same links from them. Currently, I cannot do that as I get an error "Something unexpected went wrong with this URL" - I also noticed that I get the word "file" in front of the URL and that is not supposed to happen as the link is for a specific folder. I have access to the folder and when I copy the link in the file explorer I get to the folder, but I need to be able to do that when I press the link.

Can you please assist me?

Answer 1

Hi @Reni Kozareva

For our better research, please provide more information about this case:

• What is the account type?
• What's the version of your Outlook? Whether the July security update is installed?

According to your description, it seems that after installing the Outlook desktop security update, this error may occur when you click on the link in the email in Outlook desktop whose path is a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or IP address.

To resolve this issue that you need to add the file location to the trusted site, follow these steps:

Go to Control Panel >> Internet Option >> add URL, UNC, FQDN path that you want to allow.

Adjust the scale down and select Enable Protected mode:

For more details, you could refer to this article: Outlook blocks opening FQDN and IP address hyperlinks after installing protections for Microsoft Outlook Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability released July 11, 2023 - Microsoft Support.

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Answer 2

I got the same trouble !

When my colleagues want to add a link to a file on our local server in office 365 (in outlook most of the time but we got the same trouble in Excel or Word) the link we got is not in the correct format :

the link should be like

F:\Public\Orders\2023\Order123456.pdf (the way the link appear is in this format)

or at least something like

\\192.168.10.10\Public\Orders\2023\Order123456.pdf

but we got

file://\\192.168.10.10\Public\Orders\2023\Order123456.pdf

Then when the receiver get the link and click on it, he get an error message

And even if I edit the link and manage to get a link like

file://192.168.10.10/Public/Orders/2023/Order123456.pdf

This link open Edge (but I expect the file to be open in Adobe Reader) and then we get an error message (Hmmm… can't reach this page 192.168.10.10 refused to connect.)

Some time ago, it worked well :(

Thanks in advance

Answer 3

I got the solution, entry in internet explorer trusted sites must be named: file:///\fullqualifieddomainnameoffileserver.

There is still a warning, that this source is maybe not secure, but you can click yes and the link opens.