Outlook – This Operation Has Been Cancelled Due To Restrictions

A user was unable to click on any hyper-link (URL) in an e-mail and she got this error message: “This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.” Login as a different user still gave me the same error, so obviously it’s a local PC issue. This seems to be a very common problem on Windows 7 and Windows XP machines with outlook 2010 and outlook 2013.

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You might have this problem if you install some browsers or software that mess up your registry keys.

There are many solutions on the internet, including uninstalling browsers, making IE the default browsers etc. But the only way I got it to work, is to fix the registry.

It was very simple. Open up Registry Editor, goto

HKey_Current_User => Software => Classes

Try to find the following keys. If they are not there, add them.

.html

.htm

.shtml

.xhtml

.xht

Make sure they all have a default value to your favourite browser, e.g.

Chrome

ChromeHTML

Internet Explorer

htmlfile

Firefox

FireFoxHTML

But it’s a good idea to just set them to Internet Explorer, and then come back and change your default browser to either Chrome or Firefox, in the browser settings.

Make sure after you make the changes in the Registry, make your browser default as well, and then reopen Outlook to try again.