Hello - appreciate your trying to figure this out. I don't think anyone has found the exact answer.

- It does not matter if I am logged in or not, I still can not access certain pages with Word doc links.


- The form of the URL - HTTP/HTTPS does not seem to make a difference,
- This does happen on multiple PCs, my two home desktops, two personal laptops, my 2 PCs at work, my work laptop at home, the desktop PC at two friends, ....
- It does not matter what the default browser is
- The links themselves in the Word doc are FINE - no bad characters

I can create a dirt simple html doc on my PC, open that, and get to the page by clicking on a link from that.

I believe it has something to do with the page itself, that the pages that do NOT work from Word have different requirements concerning the http "refferer". At least that's my guess.

I created a work around. I created a simple html file with PHP code that reads the arguments from the URL passed in. It then dynamically creates a link, with the passed in url as the destination, and executes the click method on that.

I then put the following link in my Word doc

http://www.mywebsite.com/fb_redirect...acy.astle'

I click on the link in my word doc, it opens a browser window to my fb_redirect.html file, passes in the real url I want to go to, dynamically creates a link to that address, executes the click method on that link, and the Facebook page opens.

I've found about 16 Facebook pages that had the issue of not working from my Word doc directly, but the did work from a html doc I have on my local PC, and ALL of them work with my fb_redirect method.

I have not found any links that DO NOT work with this method.

You are not paying attention. The problem has nothing to do with Word, per se, but with the permissions required to view the page concerned.

Your links will not work on a PC where the user does not have permission to view the account in question. For example, neither of your links in this thread (including the one with the redirect) work for me whether using Word or IE and the extra one you posted on the other site only takes me to a login page. That's probably because I don't have a Facebook account, so there's no way I can view pages there requiring any kind of login.

I'm happy you've found a workaround, but it's unlikely to work for anyone else who, like me, doesn't have a Facebook account and, possibly, not even for those who do but aren't friends with the person in question.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Confused why you say it has to deal with the permissions required to view the page.
I either have or do not have "permissions to view the page", yet, from Word a link does not work, directly into a browser, it does work.

How are my "permissions to view the page" different depending on how I access the page (from Word link vs. address directly entered in browser) ?

Well how do you suppose you can view the pages but I can't, even when clicking on the links you've posted?

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I don't see that your explanation covers both conditions. Apparently your saying I have permissions to view the page.

Ok, so I can type the URL directly into the browser and the page displays. So, I have permissions to view the page.

I open my word doc, and I still have permissions to view the page. I click the link in the word doc that goes to the exact same url, and I still have permissions. Yet - I get the error and I can not view the page.

What happened to my permissions ?

Word doesn't have your web-site access permissions - they're stored somewhere in IE. So, when you use the redirect, the IE instance Word uses can retrieve them. It's IE that's retrieving them, not Word. When you don't redirect, none of your IE permissions are retrieved.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]