Excel Hyperlinks to Dropbox URL are no longer working

[jrush]

For years, we've created hyperlinks on master excel spreadsheets that link to photos in Dropbox.  All of a sudden we are getting an error message:  "Unable to open (Dropbox URL). Cannot download the information you requested"  However, when we create hyperlinks to other URLs on the web, those URLs seem to open without error.  Any idea what might be going on here?

[marinosgreek]

Hello to all!

I have a Windows 7 machine with Excel 2016 installed on it. We have an excel file in which we insert hyperlinks (for PDFs) on Dropbox. Everything worked like a charm, but lately we can't click on the hyperlinks and open the dropbox files (from Dropbox). Excel shows an error about "SSL Library error" and "unable to open cannot download the information you requested". 

I made "Edge" browser the default browser but the problem persists. In a Windows 10 machine with Excel 2016 the hyperlinks from the same file work flawlessly (!?)

Can you please help me? 

Thanks!

[Daphne]

Hello there @marinosgreek, I hope you're having a good day!

Can you send me a screenshot of the errors that you're getting when trying to open the links?

Are you using the file path to hyperlink the files, or are you perhaps using a Dropbox shared link to point to the PDF files?

Also, are you opening the Excel file locally on your computer with the installed app, or through the web browser with the Office Online integration?

Looking forward to your reply!

[marinosgreek]

Hi! 

The message is in Greek so... I will translate. The first message is "Certificate Error : the application had an internal error on loading the SSL Libraries". 

And the second is "Unable to open the https/bit.ly...etc. unable to open cannot download the information you requested"

I am using the Dropbox shared link (or compressed by bit.ly Dropbox link. Either way I get the same error message). I am also opening the excel file from a local fileserver on our intranet (I tested it also from my local hard drive, either way I get the same error messages). 

Thanks for your help!

[Lusil]

Hi there @jrush, thanks for posting your question here. 

Out of curiosity, does this happen in the same spreadsheet or are the URLs in two separate ones?

Could you also send me a screenshot of the error message?

Looking forward to hearing back from you!

[Bookworks]

Same thing happening here. I just found that my hyperlinks to Dropbox in both Microsoft Excel and Word are not working. There is no problem with other (non-Dropbx) links.

[jrush]

It seems to be happening on all of our spreadsheets with dropbox URLs, but only dropbox URLs.  Other non-dropbox URLs work.  What’s interesting is that when I simply copy the URL address from excel’s hyperlink window and paste it directly into a web browser, the Dropbox file opens without a problem.  So I know the URL format is correct in excel.  Is there any new mode of protection between our files and links to dropbox?  It seems like others seem to be having the same issue.

[Bookworks]

Once again, exactly the same thing here. Hyperlinks to other sites on the Excel spreadsheet work fine. This seemed to have happened within the last few weeks, so possibly the result of a Dropbox update? We're working with Excel 2010 on a desktop with Windows 10

[Raibis]

Hello friends!

Hyperlinks which leading from excell to the pictures don't work anymore. Both of them - excell file and pictures are saved in Dropbox. It happened until I shared the folder with the pictures. I did the same procedure many times before - everything was ok. This problem corresponds to all of my 3 devices where Dropbox has been installed. 
Please help!

Regards,

Alex

[Lusil]

Hey everyone, thanks for your ongoing reports. 

Could you just let me know if you're all running the latest version of the desktop app and that Microsoft Excel is up to date?

If they are, could you temporarily stop the Dropbox desktop app from running and try opening the hyperlinks?