Outlook Email Links too long

[imdgonz]

I run Outlook 2003 with Word as email editor. When I receive an email link
that goes to a second line it does not work. Any suggestions?

 

[Vanguard]

I run Outlook 2003 with Word as email editor. When I receive an email
link
that goes to a second line it does not work. Any suggestions?

Copy the first line, paste into a URL field (aka Address bar), copy the
next line, paste at the end of the prior paste in the URL field, repeat
as needed until you have all of the URL remerged together an in proper
order and then use that URL.

I thought Word would handle long line-wrapping URLs, so perhaps your
sending is slicing up their lines by inserting <CR><LF> in the middle of
a URL (which means you can't do anything but paste it back together
again).

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Word would only come into play on received messages if (a) the message was
in rich-text format and (b) the user had Outlook set to use Word to read
received RTF messages.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[imdgonz]

Does this mean there is a way to make it all work? If the sender uses Outlook
as their editor and i read it that way, will the links work?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Maybe. It depends on what format the sender uses for the message format.
HTML is best for preserving long URLs regardless of the recipient's possible
mail program. Plain text is the worst. RTF depends on having an Outlook
recipient.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Vanguard]

Maybe. It depends on what format the sender uses for the message
format. HTML is best for preserving long URLs regardless of the
recipient's possible mail program. Plain text is the worst. RTF
depends on having an Outlook recipient.

Also, the sender could use services that will make a shorter URL to the
same path. Some of them are:

http://snurl.com (or http://snipurl.com)
http://tinyurl.com
http://makeashorterlink.com

Say you have a long URL, like:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...tiVirus&ver=2005&src=sg&pcode=nav&svy=&csm=no

You could instead use, say, snipurl.com to create a redirect URL of:

http://snipurl.com/bxrh

And you could even customize the path portion of the redirect URL to
look like:

http://snipurl.com/nav_startup

The only problems with using these redirect URLs is that they exist only
as long as the service exists that provides the redirect, the redirects
go through their site (so if they are down then there is no lookup
possible plus you are revealing to that service where the redirect URL
targets), and the reader looking at the URL doesn't really know where it
leads them.

The last shortcoming can be overcome by using makeashorterlink.com which
will show a transition screen to let the user know to where they will be
redirected, as in:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?D5983163A

However, the link itself still doesn't give a clue to the target to
which it redirects so the reader has to assume that the person who
generated the link actually configured the redirect to show the
transition page.

In HTML format, the line-wrapping is handled correctly so the text of
the link remains connected. Also, the sender could hide the URL and
just provide a clickable link, as in:

<A>href="http://www.symantec.com/...>NAV startup</A>

which only shows "NAV startup" the reader can click on rather than
trying to use the ridiculously long URL. This is also how spammers
trick users into clicking on links that redirect them somehwere else,
like:

<A>href="http://paypal.identifythief.co.au/bogusloginpage.asp">http://www.paypal.com</A>

The user thinks they are clicking on http://www.paypal.com but instead
goes to the spammer's own site which present a look-alike login page to
steal the users username and password. Unlike Internet Explorer that
will show you the true URL when you hover the mouse over a clickable
link, Outlook 2002 doesn't show the true URL in its status bar (I don't
know about Outlook 2003). So just be aware that if you use clickable
text links (to hide the URL) then your recipients may distrust you or
get irritated that they have to look at the source code of your HTML
message to know where it really goes. But the same is somewhat true of
the shorter redirect URL links mentioned above as the reader really
doesn't know to where it goes until they click it.

 

[dgonz]

Thank you Sue. I am doing all of this with two computers in my office. My
partner sends me emails daily with a list of links. They are using Outlook
with Word as editor and sending with HTML composition. Her links work
perfectly, but once the email is forwarded to me the links are incomplete as
they go to a second line. I have never been able to resolve this (3 years). I
am just hoping for a miracle.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Thank you Sue. I am doing all of this with two computers in my
office. My partner sends me emails daily with a list of links. They
are using Outlook with Word as editor and sending with HTML
composition. Her links work perfectly, but once the email is
forwarded to me the links are incomplete as they go to a second line.
I have never been able to resolve this (3 years). I am just hoping
for a miracle.

Forwarding willo reformat many things. Try this once: instead of forwarding
a message to you, have them create a new one and then drag the message they
want sent to you to the new message, which will make it an attachment. When
you get it, open the attachment and see if the URLs are intact.