Cannot open HTTPS hyperlinks to PDF documents from Word 2016

Question

Hi,

We are having a strange issue.

I've tried searching, and can see some similar issues, but no real resolutions.

I have narrowed the issue down to:

Windows 10 (Enterprise) 64-bit

MS Office 2016 32-bit (Part of Office 365 E3)

Create a Word document, and add a hyperlink to a PDF file hosted using HTTPS (e.g. https://domain.com/document.pdf)

If the link is http, it works.

If the link is to a normal website, it works.

Only when it is both PDF and HTTPS, it fails.

If I change the https in the hyperlink to http, then the document will open, though it gives this message first:

Any ideas/suggestions?

Thanks,

Anthony

Answer 1

Ho Joshua,

I am happy to try this on a spare machine as a test only, but I would not consider this as a solution.

We can certainly do this to our own machines, but we have no control over our customers computers, and cannot recommend that they make changes to the registry.

If this is the only workaround available, then this ticket needs to be lodged as a bug, and fixed in an upcoming patch

Answer 2

Hi Anthony,

Please create a new user account and switch to the account and check if the issue still exists.

On the other hand, could you please provide the following information for further investigation:

1. What’s your Office version? Please check in Word > File > Account and show up a screenshot of this page.
2. Please share one of the link with us via private message for test.

Regards,

Joshua

Answer 3

Hi Joshua,

Issue occurs with a different user.

It is not restricted to my machine. It occurs on all machines in our office (and from what I've read, many other people have the same issue too)

My Word version is included in a post earlier in this thread: ![](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/a36bf60f-08a7-4064-bcd7-c5990a14f2fb?platform=QnA"https://httpspdfissue.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/document-of-links/" rel="ugc nofollow">https://httpspdfissue.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/document-of-links/

No need to use Private message, as these documents are all freely available online without any confidential information.

For quick reference, here are some links that do not work (if included in a Word document)

https://httpspdfissue.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/test.pdf

https://s1.q4cdn.com/806093406/files/doc_downloads/test.pdf

https://www.alejandrodelasota.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/demoform1.pdf

These all work if you click on them directly here, but paste them into a Word document, then try to click on them from there and you get the error shown in my first post

Thanks,

Anthony

Answer 4

Hi Anthony,

Since the issue occurs to all users in your Office, and we can’t reproduce the issue from our side, I suspect that the issue is related to the network environment. Could you please try switch to another environment and check the result?

Regards,

Joshua

Answer 5

Hi Anthony,

Please share some update with us when you have time.

Regards,

Joshua