Word or Excel hyperlinks are slow to open

Sometimes, when you click on any link in a Microsoft Office program like Excel or Word, it takes a lot of time to open. If you face this issue, then this post will be able to help you.

Word or Excel hyperlinks are slow to open

If Microsoft Office Word or Excel hyperlinks are slow to open, under usual circumstances or when they point to Microsoft AD FS Server, then try these suggestions:

1. Open Word (or Excel) Options
2. Click Advanced
3. Locate the Save section
4. Select the Copy remotely stored files onto your computer checkbox
5. Click OK and exit.

Word or Excel hyperlinks are slow to open AD FS sites

Active Directory Federation Service (AD FS) enables single sign-on functionality, which offers customers a streamlined user experience while accessing the web-based applications of an organization. However, at times, when you try to access such sites through hyperlinks in Microsoft Office applications like Word or Excel the sites take a minimum of 60 seconds to open.

This issue mainly arises because of the following 2 reasons. First, ADFS is not equipped to handle a HEAD request that it receives from either Word or Excel applications. Second, although AD FS attempts to respond by returning an error message, the AD FS protocol rejects it since the HEAD response can’t contain a request body. To fix it try the following:

1. Open Windows Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to \Office\16.0\Common\Identity.
3. Add DWORD: ReplaceHLinkHEADRequestWithGET.
4. Change the value to 1 (Hexadecimal for Base).
5. Close and Exit the Registry Editor.
6. Restart PC.

Open the Windows Registry Editor. For this, press Win+R in combination to bring up the ‘Run’ dialog box.

Type ‘regedit’ in the empty field of the box and press ‘Enter’.

When the Registry Editor opens, navigate to the following path address –

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Identity.

Create a new registry key – DWORD – ReplaceHLinkHEADRequestWithGET.

Double-click the entry and change its value from default ‘0’ to ‘1’.

When done, close the Registry Editor and Exit.

Restart your PC. Your Problem should be fixed, and Office apps like Excel, Word should not take long to open AD FS sites.