HELP! IE7 is messing up URLs in my emails

[NoelNoel]

Help please! How do I fix this very unfriendly Microsoft glitch?

Microsoft Updates finally persuaded me to install IE7 on a notebook a few
days ago. Since then URLs in the text of HTML emails received via Outlook
2003 have become inaccessible. the same appliers to URLs under linked images
in incoming HTML emails.

The URL or linked image when clicked shows a little message next to the
cursor which says: "BLOCKED: contact your system administrator."

I run Windows XP and note that in 2007 in this forum a user reported exactly
thie same set of circumstances.... Windows XP, Outlook 2003, just installed
IE7, suddenly URLs blocked in emails.

The advice he was given then was to edit 3 or 4 keys in the registry every
time he wanted to unblock an emailed URL, then immediately after using that
URL go and change the registry back again to maintain security. Clearly that
is unsustainable when more than half the emails people receive these days
contain web links and URLs.

Quite honestly this is hassle I could do without and I thought Microsoft had
stopped trying to bully people into unwieldy stuff.

Can anyone tell me how to fix it before I simply uninstall IE altogether?...
assuming that that would solve the problem, which it might not!

Thanks,

NOEL

 

[Dave F.]

Try this...

Click Start>Set program access and defaults. Then on the form that opens
expand Custom. Under Chose a default Web browser: click Internet Explorer.
Then click the Ok button. This should fix the problem.

Dave F.

 

[NoelNoel]

I am grateful for your help, but your advice only partially solved the
problem, and anyway I achieved the same partial fix without making IE7 my
default browser (IE is still inferior to Firefox) by going the same route you
suggested, leaving Firefox as my default browser but in the same dialogue box
ticking the box to Enable Access to the IE7 program

This still left problems in Outlook which I did eventually solve and I will
post a longer explanation in case anybody else has this problem.

 

[NoelNoel]

Having started this thread with my plea for help, I am now glad to be able to
provide a solution for any fellow sufferers... apparently I am not alone. But
I must say that as a grateful fan of Microsoft for the huge power it put on
my desktop for most of my working life, I am now very angry with Microsoft
for dumping this free IE7 garbage on unsuspecting paid-up Outlook users.

I owe thanks to Dave.F and someone on another forum for their answers
to my plea -- they gave me two thirds of the clues needed to fix this, and it
has worked on my computer.

1.
As mentioned by Dave F, you can sort of fix this problem by making
IE7 your default browser, but you can also achieve this and still retain a
better browser like Firefox while NOT making IE7 the default. Here's what I
found out...

(a) Click on your Windows Start Button and from the usual menu on the right
choose Set program access and defaults.
(b) On the form that opens, the bottom button on the left should be
pre-selected to Set program access and defaults .
(c) Click to select the Custom radio button and click to drop down
its information (arrows across on the right hand side).
(d) Under Choose a default Web browser: you can select Internet
Explorer... but you do not have to... I found I could achieve the desired
result by leaving Firefox selected as my default browser. All you have to do
is put a tick in the box to Enable Access to this Program -- the one
for Internet Explorer. Obviously, make sure that you also keep this box
ticked for your preferred browser!
(e) Then click the OK button.
(f) This fixed most of my problem...

When I re-started Outlook 3 the same URLs in emails still came up with a
Blocked tag, but most of them now worked when clicked.

I then managed to fix the other URLs that still did not work by selecting in
my Outlook In Box the email that still had a blocked URL in its text.
I clicked on the main Outlook menu across the top Actions > Junk
E-Mail and told Outlook to Add Sender To Safe Senders' List and
Add Sender's Domain To Safe Senders' List -- obviously, I made sure
that I did trust those domains before I did that.

After rebooting and restarting Outlook I found this removed all but one of
the Blocked tags and freed all but one of the remaining Blocked
URLs. The one remaining was annoyingly the URL for our own web site, which
has always been clickable before. It was contained in the embedded signature
of an HTML email sent by a colleague. If anyone works out how to free
that, I'd really like to know..

This may sound like I had been really dumb in a RTFM sort of way, missing
blocked links in junk from untrustworthy sources, but some of the URLs/email
addresses including our web site had previously worked fine. They only
changed to an “untrustworthy†status when I installed IE7.

Anyway, I felt really good about solving the issue WITHOUT bowing to
Microsoft and having to make IE7 my default browser.

2.
I then went further because I wanted revenge and was intent, having fixed
the problem, on removing IE7 completely from my PC. Imagine my surprise when
I went into Control Panel > Windows Change or Remove Programs to find
that when I clicked on IE7 no Remove Program button was provided. I
could find no way to de-instal that junk.

At this stage I was absolutely not going to give in, so I next installed IE8
over the top of IE7. This worked fine. And IE8 does have a REMOVE
button...

Microsoft really has to stop doing this to their customers. I should add (is
this sour grapes for all the hassle I had?) that you can get some really
useful add-ons for the latest Firefox browser. It's great.

Anyway, thanks to the forum and its users for helping... I hope this post in
turn will help some others. Apologies for being so long-winded.

NOEL

PS: I was also advised elsewhere to go into IE7's Options and set Outlook as
the default email program to solve all of this/ The advice is no doubt
correct to solve at least part of the problem, but not having Outlook set was
not a cause of the trouble... I already had Outlook set.