This seems to be a very common occurrence with many of our customers:

When clicking on a hyperlink in an e-mail, I get this Message : “This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.”

If you use Outlook 2013 you will get a message like this one:

Your organization’s policies are preventing us from completing this action for you. For more info, please contact your help desk

Follow these steps below for a quick fix.

If you’re using Windows XP:

  1. Close Outlook
  2. Open Internet Explorer.
  3. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
  4. Click the Advanced tab, and then click the Reset button.
  5. Under Internet programs, verify that the correct e-mail program is selected.
  6. Click to select the Internet Explorer should check to see whether it is the default browser check box.
  7. Click Apply, and then click OK.

If you receive a message when Internet Explorer starts telling you that IE is not currently your default browser, click Yes to make it your default.

If you’re using Windows 7 or Vista:

  1. Close Outlook
  2. Open Internet Explorer.
  3. On the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
  4. Click the Advanced tab, and then click the Reset button.
  5. On the Programs tab, under Internet programs, click Set Programs, then “Set your Default Programs”, select your e-mail program and click “Set this program as Default”. Repeat for Internet Explorer.
  6. Click OK and close the dialogs.

You need to set Internet Explorer as default and verify the problem is fixed. If you prefer a different browser, you can set it as default later.


If the above doesn’t help you, we will attempt to manually adjust the registry entries to make the necessary changes.

  1. Start, click Run, type Regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
  2. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.html
  3. Right click the value for the .html key and select Modify…
  4. Change the value from “ChromeHTML” to “htmlfile” (or from FireFoxHTML to htmlfile)
  5. Repeat for .htm, shtml, .xht, .xhtml, .xhtm keys

After making these changes, you will need to restart your computer.