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Clicking a hyperlink in an Excel 365 worksheet will not open the URL in Firefox

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Clicking a hyperlink in an Excel 365 worksheet will not open the URL in Firefox.

Using Excel 365, the worksheets contain tables of short interest history collected from a URL that varies only in the portion that is the companies symbol ( i.e. https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/akts/short-interest , where "akts" is the company symbol ). On the worksheet for each company this URL, with the correct symbol for the company has been included in a cell using the hyperlink feature.

In the past, clicking any of the hyperlinks immediately opened my default browser, which is the current version of Firefox, to the web page for the company identified by the symbol in the URL.

That changed after a version update of Firefox a number of months ago. Clicking the hyperlink will most times "freeze" Excel, and if I click anywhere in or on Excel a "not responding" message is thrown, and Excel must be manually closed resulting in a recover event for all workbooks that were open. Sometimes, not always, waiting several minutes, Firefox will open the URL. Not always. I've found that if that occurs, clicking on the same URL hyperlink that finally opened (after having closed it in Firefox) will crash Excel.

The attached image is a view of the "tip" still visible on a black screen after Excel has crashed.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Clicking a hyperlink in an Excel 365 worksheet will not open the URL in Firefox. Using Excel 365, the worksheets contain tables of short interest history collected from a URL that varies only in the portion that is the companies symbol ( i.e. https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/akts/short-interest , where "akts" is the company symbol ). On the worksheet for each company this URL, with the correct symbol for the company has been included in a cell using the hyperlink feature. In the past, clicking any of the hyperlinks immediately opened my default browser, which is the current version of Firefox, to the web page for the company identified by the symbol in the URL. That changed after a version update of Firefox a number of months ago. Clicking the hyperlink will most times "freeze" Excel, and if I click anywhere in or on Excel a "not responding" message is thrown, and Excel must be manually closed resulting in a recover event for all workbooks that were open. Sometimes, not always, waiting several minutes, Firefox will open the URL. Not always. I've found that if that occurs, clicking on the same URL hyperlink that finally opened (after having closed it in Firefox) will crash Excel. The attached image is a view of the "tip" still visible on a black screen after Excel has crashed. Thanks for any help you can provide.
Nataali seetu yiñ ci takkaale

Saafara biñ tànn

May have stumbled onto a reason for this. Be back about 2 hours.

Jàng tontu lii ci fi mu bokk 👍 0

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Do links in Excel work normally if you change your default browser to Microsoft Edge?

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Made Edge my default browser, and clicked the URL from the same Excel 365 workbook.

Edge acted the same as Firefox does. It did not immediately open the link, and Excel appeared to have frozen (mousing over - not clicking on on the workbook - caused the upper ribbon to be covered with white). The link did open after about a one minute wait. That's similar to Firefox, maybe a little quicker compared to Firefox, when after waiting the URL will open.

Thanks for your help.

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Hmm, it's strange. Links in Office apps should open in your default browser promptly and not freeze up the system. I wonder whether there is any kind of filtering that is interfering with the process.

What about other applications such as Word or Acrobat? Are they similarly affected or is it just Excel?

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FoxIt PDF, EmEditor (a code/cvs/text/big data editor), a URL shortcut on the desktop and Word 365 all open immediately.

I'm going to put this aside until end my workday in about 120 minutes.

Again, thank you for the help.

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Saafara yiñ Tànn

May have stumbled onto a reason for this. Be back about 2 hours.

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Hi!

Had the idea to test a group of URL's. So added a handful of non-NASDAQ hyperlinks to the same workbook that was used earlier today. Every one of them open immediately in Firefox.

Next, I deleted all NASDAQ.com cookies, restarted everything and tried again. After a minute or more the NASDAQ URL came up in Firefox. The new, smaller group of cookies left behind included one with the full URL passed from Excel.

My conclusion is that the problem is most likely due to NASDAQ detecting (somehow) that the URL doesn't originate from a web browser, and delays or stops the delivery of the page. If I open Firefox and paste the same URL in the address bar, the requested page is opened immediately.

Excel itself could be the problem, and there are a number of "excel fixes" for the problem in search results that I may fiddle with, sometime. FYI, the most interesting for me is this one:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2653626/why-are-cookies-unrecognized-when-a-link-is-clicked-from-an-external-source-i-e

A little beyond my regedit32 experience, but there are others, including on Microsoft support that suggest registry changes to fix MS Office link hyperlink passing problems. I may try that, too, sometime.

Thank you so much for giving attention to this issue. For now, I'll just copy and paste the URL into the browser.

All the best to you.

Craig Cooper