When I click on a website link in a Microsoft Outlook email, rather than going to the web page the following error message appears: “This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator”. This has only happened recently. The computer is running Windows Vista Home Premium.

This is a known problem which can occur when you have upgraded versions of Internet Explorer and is caused by Outlook not knowing whether to open the website link in Internet Explorer. There are a few methods to resolve this problem (some easier than others) which we will go through. The first solution involves resetting the Internet Explorer program associations. Open Internet Explorer and go to the “Tools” menu > “Internet Options”. In the Internet Options window that appears, click the “Advanced” tab. At the bottom of the window click the “Reset” button. Be aware, this will reset the Internet Explorer settings so make sure you understand what will be reset (and potentially lost) before confirming that you wish to proceed with the reset. Once the reset has been completed, click the “Programs” tab in the Internet Explorer window. Under the “Internet programs” heading, click the “Set programs” button. In the next window that appears, click “Set your default programs”. Select Microsoft Outlook and click the button to “Set this program as default”. Repeat this same procedure for Internet Explorer. Close all the open windows and then check whether the problem continues.

If the previous procedure does not resolve the problem, then we will need to import a fix into the Windows Registry. The registry holds most of the system settings which Windows requires to operate and the Outlook link problem can be caused by an incorrect setting. To fix this problem we need to import a file into the registry which contains the correct setting. A copy of the file can be found at www.slipstick.com/problems/i/restrictions_fix.txt . The easiest way to implement this fix is to copy the text within the file at the previous URL into a blank Notepad document. Then, in Notepad, go to the “File” menu > “Save”. When you are naming the file, save the file as “OutlookFix.reg” (with the quotes around the file name) then click “Save”. This will save the file with the .reg file extension, telling Windows that when we double-click the file, we want to import the file into the Windows registry. Once this has been done, close Notepad. Find the “OutlookFix.reg” on your computer and then double-click on the file. You should be prompted as to whether you would like to import the file into the registry, so click OK to confirm. Once the file has been imported successfully (which should happen immediately) a message will appear confirming that it has been successful. At this point, restart Windows and check whether the problem continues.

If you encounter an error when importing the registry file, such as reporting that the file is not valid, then it is likely that you did not correctly copy the text from the website file. In this case try again, being extra careful to ensure that all text is being copied into the file on your computer.