Hyperlinks from Powerpoint working sporadically

[hiimpactMrN]

I've had a teacher say that the hyperlinks in their PowerPoint slides are not linking to the youtube videos they are supposed to.

 

I had him send me a copy of the ppt file and sure enough when clicked in a slide show the following error occurs

 

 

I checked all links in the presentation, all presented with the same error, but the links work when pasted into a browser window.

 

Now here's where things get a bit odd.

 

I went away from my desk to do another job, planning to research the error when I got back I tried to replicate the error. Except the links worked and all the videos played in the browser window as they should. I saved the presentation as a different file name (let's say file2). I then re downloaded the original file (file1) and tried again. The error occurred as it had the first time.

 

I opened file2 and the links worked, returned to file 1 and low and behold the links worked on this file too.

 

Needless to say I was stumped.

 

I sent file2 back to the teacher and asked him to open the links in it. The error occurred for him. I went and had a look at his machine, trying to replicate what I had done in our IT office but to no avail.

 

I came to the conclusion it is something to do with the way powerpoint is handling the URL requests. We can't straight up embed videos into presentations because of the way the firewall policies are set up but links usually work.

 

Is there anyway of finding out how or why this happens? The teacher says they work fine at home some I'm thinking it may be in the group policy but that wouldn't explain why they work on my machine sporadically? As if it was a group policy thing surely my admin login would have the links work all the time?

 

I'm puzzled so any light shed on this would be greatly appreciated!

[chazzy2501]

is their default browser different? I'm not sure how powerpoint calls URLs but this kind of thing happens with SIMS reports when users install chrome.

[hiimpactMrN]

Default browser should be Firefox according to our Network Manager.

 

I set mine to Chrome after the links tried to start in Edge. The links also opened in Chrome fine (when they did open!)

 

This is why I think the error comes in powerpoint calling any browser to service the link. Just not sure where the hang up is.....

[Mako]

It's an old solution for older versions of Office, but you could give it a try:

 

Find the registry key in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\xx.0\Common\Internet 

(where xx is the version of Office you have)

 

Add a new DWORD subkey with the value ForceShellExecute and set the data to 1.

 

Also other things to test: is it consistent with YouTube? Have you tried another hyperlink? Has the user tried a different machine?