After the OUTSTANDING success yesterday to sort out internet access on dad's elderly Win98 computer I thought it was appropriate to ask for help with a much lesser 'glitch' on one of my machines

The machine is not at fault - the problem is with Outlook which I use for email with Word as the message editor

I have used the same disk set to load Office 2003 on 5 machines. On 4 of them Outlook works fine but on one machine any web address (showing as blue/ underlined text) in a received post WILL NOT launch when I click on it.

What I get is a message
"this operation has been cancelled due to restriction in operation on this computer. please contact your system administrator"

I am of course the administrator - so that is not very useful advice. Clearly there is a "tick in a box" missing/ present somewhere which WILL ALLOW links to be activated from Outlook, but be damned if I can find it

Help please

Snod

The way I remember it in Outlook Express (not the same I know), it was Tools > Options > Security.

Not sure on Outlook however, whilst I have the entire Office 2k3 installed, its the one component that I dont install (alongside Visio).

What OS is it? If it's Vista, you are actually quite unlikely to be the total Admin, though your account may have administrator privaledges, you have to hack it to enable th Administrator account lol - useful for when you have any permissions problems, just switch between accounts, easy peasy lemon squeezy!.

have a look at http://www.slipstick.com/problems/link_restrict.htm hope this helps :s

Yes, the route TOOLS > Options etc is the way to adjust most things in Outlook.

However, so far as I can see EVERYTHING is identical for the Outlook setup options between the machine that will not behave - and the others that will behave. It has taken ages but I sat there with two machines open and one-by-one I compared every page of tools > Options > security, and the derivative pages

OS is win XP

I understand what you say about the difference between admin privilages and the Admin account. I must confess I have not used the true Admin account since I acquired the machine 3 years or so ago. In fact I am not sure now how to access it! I remember that I did not password protect it on a basis that I was BOUND to forget the password. However, I cannot believe that the real Admin is needed to make some small change to a program operation

Snod

Right norm some where along the line.. The access Defaults have buggered up. To rectify the problem..

Click Start

Then under Control Panel click "Set Program Access And Defaults"

Then click "Custom"

Then click "Choose a Default Web Browser"

Then click "Internet Explorer"

then Click "OK"

NOTE: Make sure internet explorer and outlook express are closed before doing the above..

Then try outlook express again..

If that doesnt work then its a Registry Issue which if you like i could fix for you

Done. All your helpful replies were pointing in the smae direction ie probably a registry corruption issue.

Not perfect solution to the problem but for sure good enough

The link given by ck666 contained good instructions and that cleared the problem - EXCEPT that web hotlinks from Outlook now launch into Internet Explorer. Normally I use Firefox as a browser - but for hotlinks I really am not fussed which browser is used

Thanks everyone

Snod

I think you might have to make Firefox the default browser (in Options), even if you had it set up that way before making the changes that you did? Just a suggestion!