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I have a hyperlink and when put into MS Office programs the error

Unable to open http.://... . Cannot download the information you requested.

will occur and the link will not be displayed. The link works for example from within lotus notes or pasting directly into the browser window. (can't provide it, intranet application).

I googled the issue but the common solutions like untick work offline (it is already) don't work and it is an http request not https so http://blogs.technet.com/b/the_microsoft_excel_support_team_blog/archive/2011/11/15/quot-cannot-download-the-information-you-requested-quot-executing-web-query-from-excel.aspx does also not apply.

Is there any solution for this?

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3 Answers 3

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I have been researching a similar problem. I get the "Cannot download the information you requested" error message when hyperlinking to a secure, non-caching, login page using PowerPoint 2016. In my case, PowerPoint pops up an authentication window and crashes instead of opening my default browser with the URL.

The problem seems to be related to how Office Products open hyperlinks, as noted in this comment. Apparently, they route the initial request through Internet Explorer regardless of your default browser.

You can work around this by hyperlinking to a .bat file that opens the link instead. Open a text editor and create the following .bat file:

@echo off
REM Office fails to open Hyperlinks
REM This .bat file can do it though
REM See https://superuser.com/questions/826552/cannot-download-the-information-you-requested-power-point-word-excel/1474218 for details

start "" "https://superuser.com/"

The only downside to this solution is having to click Enable on a security warning.

If this isn't your style Microsoft has a documented solution:

  • Modify the registry using the easy fix from the linked Microsoft troubleshooting page

    To have us work around this problem for you, go to the "Here's an easy fix" section.

  • Modify the registry manually using the instructions from the linked Microsoft troubleshooting page

    To work around this issue, either add the ForceShellExecute subkey, if it is not present, and set the Value data, or if it is present, set the Valuedata of the ForceShellExecute subkey.

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    Welcome to Super User! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.
    – Machavity
    Aug 22, 2019 at 17:49
  • Thank you for the heads up! I will add the essential parts of the answer.
    – Julian
    Aug 22, 2019 at 18:24
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As said Julian, this issue occurs intermittently and the definitive solution is proposed by Microsoft here.

You may also see the detailed solution in this other SuperUser question, which was specifically for Microsoft Word, but it also applies to Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook (as explained by Microsoft).

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I had the error

runtime error -2146697208 (800c0008) cannot download the information you requested

when calling a hyperlink from vba using

ThisWorkbook.FollowHyperlink Address:=urlString

Annoyingly, the error was only displayed when calling the command from the direct window, it wouldn't show up from a sub. As Sandra Rossi pointed out, Microsoft proposes a registry change to work around. Highly impractical for me. What worked for me was instead using

CreateObject("Shell.Application").ShellExecute "microsoft-edge:" & urlString

One could also call chrome or any other browser but edge is the easiest call when the same document is used on different machines. See here.

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