Itās very common and very frustrating ā someone sends you a link in email,
you click it, and ā¦
Nothing.
Or perhaps page not found.
Or maybe something else entirely.
Itās not their fault, itās not your fault, and itās not really your email
programās fault, although it is the email programās doing.
Iāll show you one way to pull it all back together.
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Long URLs
The problem is URLs or web page addresses that are too long: URLs that are so long that they donāt fit on a single line when your email program displays them.
Hereās a really long link to a page on one of my other sites:
http://www.forwardedfunnies.com/how_many_dogs_does_it_take_to_change_a_light_bulb_000182.html
At 94 characters long, thatās a fairly lengthy URL.
In fact, itās too long for many email programs. Many email programs attempt to force the text in your message to be no wider than some number of characters. For example, an email program might force all of the text to be no wider than 72 characters. For words, thatās not a problem ā the text is reformatted, breaking lines at the spaces between words.
What if there are no spaces?
Then, many mail programs do this:
http://www.forwardedfunnies.com/how_many_dogs_does_it_take_to_change_a_
light_bulb_000182.html
Notice how the URL has been literally broken into two at column 72.
The problem is that even though the first 72 characters are highlighted as a link, they are incomplete. The link wonāt work because it doesnāt include the part that was placed on the next line.
Hereās another example, taken from an email that I received this morning:
Itās broken.
Copy/Paste to the rescue
Once you have received a URL broken in this way, you need to use copy and paste to reconstruct the original URL on a single line.
Start by using your mouse to select the first line of the URL:
Click-and-hold your mouse pointer just past the right-most character in the line and drag it to the left, highlighting the text as itās selected. Once youāve selected the entire portion of that line, release the mouse button.
Then right-click the selected text:
Click Copy to copy the selected text to the clipboard.
Next, switch over to your browser; click in the address bar and type CTRL+A to select all of whatever may be there. If you want, you may then press the Delete key on your computer to clear the address bar.
Now, right-click in the empty address bar and click Paste. The first part of the broken URL that you copied to the clipboard will be placed in the address bar:
Do not press Enter, click Go in the browser, or do anything that would cause the browser to try to load that URL. Remember, the link is broken.
Now, we need to go pick up the second part to fix it.
Back in your email message, select the second line of the broken URL:
Once again, right-click it and click Copy to copy it to the clipboard.
Now, go back to the browser and carefully click somewhere past the right side of what weāre previously pasted:
Make sure that nothing in the address bar is selected and that what you previously pasted is still there and unmodified. Some browsers will highlight the existing contents when you return to the address bar. Place the cursor past the right end of the first part of the URL for the next step.
Right-click there and click Paste:
The second line that we copied to the clipboard will be pasted after the first part, joining them into a single URL.
Now, you can press Enter or click Go to view that URL.
Summary
When you receive a link in an email thatās broken by having been split across several lines, for each line simply:
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Select it using your mouse.
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Copy it to the clipboard using right-click and selecting Copy.
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Paste it into the browser address bar using right-click and selecting Paste. Make sure to clear the address bar before pasting the first segment. Once pasted, place the cursor immediately at the end of the link segment before pasting any new segments.
When done, press Enter to go to the fixed URL.
Next Steps
Itās clearly a bit of work. You might want to encourage friends that regularly send you long links to use a URL-shortening service before putting that link in email. How do I post a long link in email? shows you one way to do exactly that.
Video
Transcript
Using Copy/Paste to fix a broken link in email.
Hi everyone, this is Leo Notenboom for askleo.net. Earlier today, I received an email that contained a long URL to this e-card and as you can see from the image here, the link is kinda sorta broken. Itās broken over two lines because the link was too long.
Now if I click on the part thatās actually highlighted like a link normally would, youāll see that it goes to the appropriate server but the e-card itself doesnāt work and thatās simply because the id number that they happened to use for this has been cut off. So what we need to do is go back to our email and in this case, weāll use Copy/Paste to go to this link. Weāll start by using the mouse button and Iām going to click off to the right of the first part of this link, hold and drag the mouse over to select the first part of that link. Now Iām going to right-click on it and select Copy. Now you can also type Ctrl+C instead of doing this right-click and Copy, but Iām using right-click and Copy here to show you and make it more obvious.
Now, weāll go back to the browser and up in the address bar (weāll pretend this wasnāt already here) up in the address bar, weāll right-click again and type in āPasteā. Now, we didnāt type in paste and go we just typed in paste; we havenāt actually done anything yet. All weāve done is put that first part of that URL in the address bar.
Now weāre gonna go back to the email program and repeat that with the second part of that link. In other words, I clicked off to the right-hand side of the second line. Iām going to click and hold and drag and all the way over to the left until everythingās been selected and release the mouse button.
Now, Iāll right-click on it; click Copy; go back to the web browser where Iāve got the first part; click off to the right of that, making sure that nothing is selected depending on your browser. As you can see, the initial thing it did was select the entire URL. We donāt want that. Some will actually select the last part of the URL. We donāt want that either. What we want is this one lone cursor off to the very end of what we pasted first then weāll right-click, type Paste and what weāve done now is created the entire URL. Weāve reconstructed that single line that got broken in two in email. And in fact at this point, if I just hit Enter, I get the e-card I was expecting. Thatās all there is to it: copy, paste, put in pieces of back together back in the address bar.
Iām Leo Notenboom for askleo.net.
Leo, when I receive a ābrokenā link, I copy and paste both lines at the same time. I have never had a problem doing that. BTW, I enjoy the newsletter.
Bill K.
I highlight all lines in email.
copy.
Paste into notebook.
get rid of all returns at end of lines to make one long line
copy edited line
paste into address box.
This saves pasting multiple times into address box and makes sure no characters are added or lost.
One business that sends me a URL to link to always puts a period at the end of it. It took me the longest time to realize that all I had to do was remove the period and then everything worked fine.
BTW, love your newsletter; keep up the good work.
05-Jan-2012
Leo, I have had the same experience as Bill K. in that I just select (drag across) both lines, copy, and then paste it into the browserās address bar. (I used your two line version of the URL.) Out of curiosity I then pasted it into Word and turned on invisible characters and it showed a ānew lineā character after ātake_to_change_a_ā, probably due to the way it was posted on this site so that it would be split into two lines. But nevertheless, after selecting both lines the line feed was ignored and took me directly to the correct website. I then became gutsy and arbitrarily added three ācarriage returnā characters within the URL, making it four lines and to my surprise doing the above with all four lines, worked. I tested this in Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer with the same results.
Can i suggest anyone sending long email links use
http://www.tinyulr.com What i found useful is using the link on the webpage to make a widget within your toolbar what you must do is
1. drag the link to your toolbar then press the shift button too release the ulr and a red widget appears like magic.
2. Then what you do is if you have a web page you want To send alert someone about press the widget.
3. Tinyurl opens with the ulr shortend for you To copy and paste
To give an example of tinyulr use to the uninitiated
this is an amazon page link
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kindle&x=20&y=18
now pressing the tinyulr widget coverts this too
http://tinyurl.com/72hvza3
Which would you rather send?
05-Jan-2012
If not any link will work it may be caused by changed registry settings, this has occured to me (Win XP). Here are settings that work with Chrome-browser:
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell]
@=āChromeā
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\Chrome\command]
@=ā\āC:\\Documents and Settings\\(username)\\Local settings\\Application Data\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe\ā %1ā³
Another way is to go into āFolder settings/File typesā in Explorer and find
āURL:HyperText Transfer Protocolā almost on top. There you can assign which program shall open the link.
When I click on a link and my browser gives me a āPage Not Foundā error message, I have found that sometimes, somehow, there is a blank space that has gotten into the link text. Taking that space out and reentering can solve that problem. I donāt have any idea how that blank space got introduced into the link.
I found it easiest to select the entire URL by placing the mouse pointer at the end of the last line, hold down the left mouse button and slide the pointer left and up to the beginning of the first line. This avoids having the āhandā actually trigger the partial URL before you can paste the complete one.
In your advice about reattaching broken email URLās you mentioned ācopying to the clipboardā. WHAT and/or WHERE is this mysterious clipboard? Many times as I have closed a program the screen will pop up telling me I āhave a lot of information on the clipboardā and do I āwant to save it?ā Havenāt a clue where to look to find out what/where it is.
06-Jan-2012
Roger-Cyndy Wilber the following link should help explain the clipboard.
http://tinyurl.com/7af5aub