External hyperlinks generated with RPE 1.2.1 and newer do not work from Word (Ctrl+Click) as the address is prefixed with a “#”. This is a defect in RPE and and until the defet is fixed a solution is to use a post processing macro to identify and correct the hyperlinks.
Public Sub fixLinks()
Dim lnk As Hyperlink
' RPE generated links are empty and the link is stored in the sub-address field
For Each lnk In ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks
If Len(lnk.address) = 0 And InStr(lnk.SubAddress, "http") = 1 Then
lnk.address = lnk.SubAddress
End If
Next
End Sub
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Should it be “RPE 1.2.1 and later”?
Good point, thanks Prasad.
(sorry, new to replying to your blog but following it since some time and maybe stupid question)
How/where do you implement this post-processing code? Is it in the .dot file used for stylesheet or somewhere in RPE template?
How do you secure automatic run of post-processing macro?
Thx for all your excellent posts, I’ll reply on several on them gradually as I have feedback and questions (using RPE with Focal Point)
Welcome to the ranks of commenters of this blog and thanks for your feedback and questions.
On the macro topic:
– the code goes indeed in the stylesheet used for the Word output and not in the template
– to have the macro executed automatically at the end of the docgen you need to:
a. specify the stylesheet for the Word output
b. enter the name of the macro ( in this case fixLinks) in the “macro” property of the Word output
See this for more details: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21395685
Thx for good explanations and the link, Dragos!
This will really come in handy. We can also include “file” apart from “http”.