SOLVED Windows 10 Mail - Hyperlinks Will Not Open

[Seymour Heiney]

Friends, I am running W10.1511.10586.11 and typically use the Outlook 2013 desktop application (part of the MS Office 2013 suite) to view, send, and file email for my primary Yahoo! IMAP account. This application works fairly well, and I really have no complaints. However, I got a little bored last night and decided to explore the Windows Mail/People/Calendar applications, something which I was unfamiliar with until last night. So I set up Mail to bring in a few of my other email accounts (Yahoo!, Outlook.com, Gmail) that I usually just log into those services' online web apps to use, and was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked its clean, simple design. So I figured I'd spend a day using this Mail app rather than the standard Outlook 2013 desktop program.

One of the things I ran into was that I cannot open URLs in any emails. Not even very common ones, such as those to twitter or Facebook. None. The message reads "Unable to open...[insert link here]". I've changed everything I can think of that may cause this behavior (changed the default email to Mail, changed default browser from Firefox to Edge, turned off my anti-virus/firewall and Malwarebytes monitoring). I'm not sure if this is just a "feature" of Mail that needs to be fixed by MS, or some setting on my machine that is causing this.

Anyone else run into this problem? Not a showstopper, as I can continue to use Outlook and online services, but the convenience of Mail (which seems to do an IMAP sync much faster than Outlook) could eventually draw me in if it eventually matures enough. However, that won't ever happen if I'm not able to traverse hyperlinks.

Thanks for reading

Seymour

 

[Seymour Heiney]

Apparently not something that is happening to anyone else, OR...lol, no one else is bothering to use the Mail app.

 

[Trouble]

Exactly..... I figured that last thing you needed or wanted to hear was someone saying "Mine works perfectly fine"

 

[Seymour Heiney]

Trouble, thanks, I can empathize with that, but to tell the truth, knowing others aren't having issues - and thus the absence of response - speaks volumes.

I actually think I've found a reason the hyperlinks were not opening: I run Emsisoft Internet Security and, as any good 3rd party security product with a firewall component does, it disabled the built-in Windows Firewall upon installation a while back. Well, as part of trying to figure out why links weren't opening, I had disabled Emsisoft to eliminate a firewall factor, but I did not enable Windows Firewall. It did not occur to me that having no firewall whatsoever would cause this problem; I figured if anything the problem would be caused by a firewall setting, not lack of one. So as I was perusing through various forum threads in the wasteland that is the Internet, I came across an old forum post on some Windows 8 site where someone had the same symptoms as I, only it was, I believe, in Windows Live Mail ( which I'm not sure how that equates to the Mail app in W10). But anyway, the OP enabled the built-in firewall and this allowed clicking the links to invoke their default browser. Once I enabled the W10 Firewall, restarted my rig, and now the links in the email when viewing through Mail all open just fine via Firefox, my default browser.

So while the cause of the non-browser invoking link clicks is solved, it still does not tell my why, although I'm not sure I'll ever know. It may be that since Mail is built-in, Windows forces the end-user to have the built-in firewall on in order to access the Internet. I thought at first maybe it was only enforced for "built-in" applications, since Outlook worked fine having Windows Firewall off. But then why wouldn't they enforce that through Edge as well, an application which I would imagine is used far more often to access the Internet than Mail is. Just makes no sense.

If at some point I decide to use Mail rather than the Outlook application in the Office suite, I'll have to determine whether Emsisoft, which as stated has a firewall component, and the W10 Firewall can coexist while both are active. I know the typical advice is to not run both the built-in firewall and a 3rd party firewall at the same time, but it may be my only solution IF I ever start using Mail as an everyday tool (which, by the way, it would have to become much more robust than it is now). I'll also be trying this theory out on my daughter's laptop when she gets home, just to see if this is isolated to my configuration or not.

Anyway, I'm marking this post as solved in hopes it may help someone that experiences the same symptoms in the future.

Thanks for reading.

Seymour.

 

[Trouble]

First of all.... Good find.
Second.... thanks for posting back and updating your thread with that information. I'm sure it will prove helpful to others.
Regards
Randy

 

[Parker A. Davis]

First of all.... Good find.
Second.... thanks for posting back and updating your thread with that information. I'm sure it will prove helpful to others.
Regards
Randy

 

[ozl]

Deactivation of the Windows Firewall causes this, confirmed here. Thanks for posting.

 

[gican]

Old post I know but... I'm having the same issue here. And at least in my case, I do not think it is related to the firewall. Here's why:

1. My original problem was not the Mail app being unable to open links. Instead, it would open them with Opera browser (my previous default), rather than with Firefox (my actual default). Unable to find a solution, I simply decided to uninstall Opera and see what would happen (I expected the Mail app to either automatically switch to the Firefox, or prompt me to choose a browser). The result was, I now get the error that it is unable to open the links. This does not seem to be related to firewall to me (but I am not a high expert);
2. My Windows Firewall is active. I also tried removing and re-assigning firewall authorization for the Mail app, but this did not solve the problem either.

Any ideas of what might be going on?

 

[Hefaistos]

So, some years after... Windows 10 Mail, not opening "some" links, while others work perfectly fine. Could not find any pattern in that, http or https makes no difference, with or without parameters, same. Must be something in the html code of the email that causes this. Will report back if something crawls up.