Links in Outlook 2010 won’t work

Some pictures part of HTML email messages do not render in the message preview pane in Microsoft Outlook 2010. Also, when clicking links in Outlook 2010, the following message is observed: This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator. The problem is most likely not a “restriction in effect” but rather left over registry modifications from a previous uninstall of Chrome or Firefox or both. Here’s how to fix the error and be on your merry email message link clicking way:

[problem]

Some HTML messages in Outlook do not render properly in the preview pane.

In some instances, when hyperlink in an email message are clicked the following error is observed: This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.

[solution]

This can occur if a third party web browser such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox was made the default application for web browsing and was then subsequently uninstalled or is no longer the default web browser. What happens in the registry is that Chrome or Firefox are made the default application to handle html files but when IE is set back as the default browser, it does not re-associate itself as the default application for those file types in the registry. Here’s how to fix that:

[step 1] Visit http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/310049 and run the Microsoft Fix it tool for your operating system version.

Manual instructions:

[step 1] Set IE as the default browser in by clicking Start->Default Programs or from within IE by clicking Tools->Internet Options->Programs->Make Default

[step 2] Open Regedit and navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

[step 3] For each of the following subkeys, change the (Default) entry from ChromeHTML or FirefoxHTML to htmlfile

.htm
.html
.shtml
.xht
.xhtml

Be sure to change each entry like so:

[step 5] Restart Outlook 2010.

That’s it.