"Outbind" prepended to link?

Ron Howerton · September 10th, 2009, 09:37 AM

Not sure this its the right place to post this question, but it concerns an HTML link that is somehow being changed. Although the VB.NET code generating the link produces this:

http://deserver/surveys/frmSurvey.aspx

The user gets this in email:

outbind://5/frmSurvey.aspx

Not finding much helpful information Googling so far. Anybody know where this is coming from and how to prevent it so the correct link is passed in email?

Imar · September 11th, 2009, 05:16 AM

Hi Ron,

Can this caused by the mail client? That is, may be the mail gets send out correctly but is messed up by the client? What happens when you send it to a different e-mail address?

Imar

Imar · September 11th, 2009, 05:18 AM

And are you sure all your links are fully qualified, absolute URLs? E.g.

protocol://server/pagename.extension

instead of just

pagename.extension

Imar

Ron Howerton · September 11th, 2009, 08:40 AM

Thanks for responding and good to hear from you again, Imar!

To be sure, I just opened the site and sent myself the email containing the link. It looked like this when it arrived in my email box

http://abc123:4545/surveys/frmSurvey.aspx

The link opened the page successfully from my email client. So it's composed correctly by the .Net code and it is not being changed by SMTP on the IIS server when it is sent. Consider also that out of a user base of several thousand, this is the only user to report this problem (so far). It therefore seems likely to me that some Outlook setting on her workstation is modifying the link, even though the user's settings are supposed to be identical to mine. And just to make this more interesting, this user is an executive working a thousand miles away!

Anyway, I already posed the same questions to the user and am awaiting a response. So I'm no more enlightened than you at the moment, unfortunately.

meow · September 11th, 2009, 09:52 AM

IIRC outbind:// is an "internal" protocol used by Outlook. As I recall it it has to do with "anchors", links to another point in the same page/email. But I'm not sure really, just remember it from some list discussion.

Ron Howerton · September 11th, 2009, 10:05 AM

Thanks for your input, Meow!

There are no internal page links involved. It does appear to have something to do with this user's Outlook settings, but I do not know what at this point. I have found many questions on the web from other developers with the same problem, but few responses and no concrete solutions on how to prevent it. I gave up on the fourth page of Google hits on the subject and this is the longest thread on the topic I can find.

Ron Howerton · September 18th, 2009, 03:03 PM

No useful responses yet? It must be a rare problem indeed if nobody on P2P Wrox has a suggestion!

Just my luck!