Shared Links not working in Word or Publisher

[Leon1452]

I recently upgraded to Windows 11 and am using Office 2010. Shared links used to open when I inserted them in Word or Publisher documents. They no longer work. Links that I uploaded before the upgrade do not work. If I insert the shared link in an email, it works fine. The problem seems to be exclusive to Office docs. I cannot find any answer for this.

[Mark]

Is it giving an error or anything?

[Jay]

Hi @Leon1452, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

As you mentioned you're using Office 2010, which is no longer supported by Microsoft, other users have reported similar issues in this Community.

Since the shared link works normally outside of the Office program, this would indicate that the issue doesn't lie with Dropbox itself, but the Word/Excel/Publisher app preventing the shared links from opening properly.

If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.

[Leon1452]

Mark,

I get an error message stating "Unable to open https:// [name of file link] Cannot download the information you requested."

The link works in Facebook and LinkedIn posts as well as emails sent from Outlook 2010. The links also worked in Word and Publisher 2010 when I was using Windows 7 Pro. The problem started when I upgraded to Windows 11 Home. This leads me to believe it is a Widows 7/Windows 11 problem and not an Office 2010 problem.

[Leon1452]

It was a Microsoft problem. I found a link to a Microsoft support work around. It was a simple addition to the registry. The hyperlinks in my Word 2010 and Publisher 2010 documents now work perfectly in Windows 11 as they did in Windows 7. Here is the link I found -

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-US/office/troubleshoot/office-suite-issues/cannot-locate-server-when-c...

[Jay]

I'm glad to hear you were able to find a solution for this matter!

If you have any further queries in the future, feel free to message back.

[berwynEd]

Thanks for the link. I will check it out. I am having the same problem using windows 7. In my word document it is only the links to one site that give the MS word download error. It is a VA link to grave sites and it doesn’t matter which grave link I use.