This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer.
Note: These solutions work in all versions of IE.
When clicking on hyperlinks in Outlook, or even linked sheets/items in Excel.
A very common question comes up often in the Microsoft forums:
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.” I get this message every time that I attempt to use the hyperlink. I am the administrator on this stand alone computer. How do I deactivate this feature so that I activate hyperlinks ?
This is not an Outlook error. The most common cause is a corrupt registry key in Internet Explorer. The registry key found at
HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Classes\htmlfile\shell\open\command |
is either damaged or corrupt.
To fix it, try resetting Web settings in Internet Explorer. If this does not resolve the issue, set IE as the default browser following the steps in Set Program Access in Control Panel. If you use a different browser as your default, you need to set IE as the default until you verify the links work in Outlook.
If you uninstalled Chrome (or Firefox) and then received the error, see Edit Registry – below
In addition to Chrome and Firefox, Maxthon and other HTML rendering and editing programs may take the HTML open command and cause this error.
Edit Registry
If you received this error after uninstalling any application that takes over the HTML open command (including, but not limited to, Chrome & Firefox browsers) you may also need to change the HTM/HTML association in the registry.
- Start, click Run, type Regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
- Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.html
- Right click the value for the .html key and select Modify…
- Change the value from “ChromeHTML” to “htmlfile” (or from FireFoxHTML to htmlfile)
An alternative is to ensure that you set IE as your default browser BEFORE uninstalling Chrome or FireFox. This will change the registry key and avoid the issue.