DOC link won't open

Jul 13, 2011

I've been using Articulate for years, but this is a new issue for me. I upgraded to the latest version of Articulate Presenter and updated PowerPoint from 2003 to 2007 (and then the trouble began).

Absolute hyperlinks to webpages or PDF files work fine, but links to online Word DOC files do not.

Now, I think I know why this is happening. Normally, when I try and open a Word DOC I am presented with a pop-up asking me to save the file or open the file. You can uncheck the checkbox so you don’t get this pop-up again. So I did just that when I opened a Word DOC from another website. Now the Word DOCs open for me just fine in my Articulate training, but that doesn't help the 3,000 employees taking my training. Many of whom just see a flash when they try to click the many hyperlinks to Word DOC files in my online presentation.

My current workaround is to convert the links/files to PDF, but because these are policy files, I'd much rather users go straight to the real policy and not a PDF copy.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

5 Replies
Brian Batt

Hi ochealth quality management,

It sounds like you're running into a restriction in Internet Explorer.  Please try the following to update your browser security settings:

1. Open Internet Explorer.

2. Go to Tools > Internet Options.

3. Select the Security tab.

4. Click on Internet.

5. Click the Custom Level button.

6. Under the Downloads section, change "Automatic prompting for file downloads" to Enable.

7. Click OK.

8. Click Apply, and then click OK.

9. Restart your browser, and test your published content again.

Mea Allen

Has anyone found a work-around to this problem, other than republishing the files in PDF?

I am encountering the exact same thing. The course was produced by consultants a year ago, and the hyperlinks to DOC files worked just fine without changing IE security settings. However, I just updated a course to fix the links (we moved to a new ISP), and now the DOC files won't open if using IE; fine in Firefox.

This leads me to believe there must be some kind of setting to get around the problem, and I undid something when I edited the hyperlinks.

Thanks.

Andrew Dunn

Articulate aren't being very forthcoming on this issue. Something changed in Studio '09, leading to this new issue with opening Word attachments in IE. I've asked a few times, but have yet to receive a satisfactory response. Changing security settings in the browser doesn't work for me, and my users wouldn't be able to do it anyway.  The supposed restriction in IE doesn't seem to affect content created in Captivate. I can build captivate content that can link to word docs, and these can be opened in IE. The issue is with Presenter.

Peter Anderson

Hi Andrew, 

I see you've been experiencing this issue for some time, but I'm not seeing that our support team has actually had a chance to work closely with you or your files. Are you able to open a ticket and send us your project files so we can run some tests on our end? We'd appreciate the opportunity to try and help. Thanks!

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