Excel hyperlink to web page location with id or named anchor

Question

In Excel, I can create a hyperlink to a web page. However, if the URL contains a # character, Excel always converts the hash sign to space-hyphen-space so the link no longer wor

Answer 1

The best solution we have found, without manually changing registry entries, is to reset Internet Explorer to be the default browser. This resets the url, protocol and extension associations and resolves the issue.

Once you do that, even changing the default browser to Firefox and changing it back to IE will not break it again.

This solution is "cleaner" than playing around the registry and has been logged as the official solution at our company.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, in Excel, I still ran into issues with safe URL encoded hyperlinks.

They would work once, then changed to a file:// hyperlink after you clicked on it once, and was broken again.

So I used the =Hyperlink() function and all was good because Excel can't change my concatenated URL string in the formula.

Yay, I win...nope

When files are in protected view, due to security settings or if the user is previewing the file as an attachment in Outlook, the # symbol still gets turned into %20-%20

Since our IT department doesn't allowed us to install another browser, we cant make Internet explorer the default browser (since it already is).

Comparing two PCs, one that I was able to change the default browser vs a standard load, I noticed that the following registry entry was missing from the standard load.

Solution: Save as Office Hyperlink Fix.reg (and double click)

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Associations\UrlAssociations\http]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Associations\UrlAssociations\http\UserChoice]
"Progid"="IE.HTTP"

After adding it to the standard load (required per every user) the links worked without any issues!

It's not all the registry entries required, but it was enough to get IE to ask to be the default browser again and add the rest (HTTPS...).