[rt-users] Linking to RT from MS Excel

[Yan Seiner]

On Wed, May 4, 2011 4:53 pm, Lai Zit Seng wrote:
> On May 5, 2011, at 7:10 AM, Yan Seiner wrote:
>
>> On Wed, May 4, 2011 3:48 pm, Yan Seiner wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm trying to set up a link from a MS Excel spreadsheet to an RT
>>> ticket.
>>> I've tried the "hyperlink" function and also a directl link; no matter
>>> what I do RT only goes to the home page.
>>>
>>> Hyperlinking directly to a ticket seems to work otherwise.  Is there
>>> something particular about excel that makes it break?  Does anyone know
>>> where to look?
>>
>> Here's the apache logs of the exchange:
>
> <snipped>
>
>> Anyone have any clue what's going on?
>>
>> It looks like a failed login, but the user is logged in on the machine,
>> and RT opens up on the user's dashboard.
>
> I've encountered similar problems with other sort of websites if
> hyperlinked from Office (not necessarily Excel, but also Word and
> PowerPoint). It's very irritating. I understand the issue is that Office
> programs will make an initial web request NOT using your favourite web
> browser, where it does not have the correct login credentials (or cookies
> of a pre-existing logged in session), and thus ends up with the wrong web
> content. If that initial web request results in a HTTP 403 error
> (forbidden), the Office program will just pop-up an error dialog without
> even launching the browser (this happens on my Drupal website).

OK, for posterity, here's the solution, provided by our very helpful IT
department:

This MSKB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899927 explains the
nature of the problem and which makes reference to the registry fix
described in this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/218153.

I can vouch for the fact that applying the fix does resolve the link problem.

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