Security warning message when clicking hyperlink in PowerPoint 2003: "files might harm your computer"

PPTools
Shape Styles brings the power of styles to PowerPoint. Apply complex formatting with a single click
Merge Excel, CSV or tab-delimited data into PowerPoint presentations to create certificates, awards presentations, personalized presentations and more
FixLinks prevents broken links when you distribute PowerPoint presentations
Optimizer saves disk space and bandwidth, shrinks your PowerPoint presentations to the right size for email, screenshow or printing
PPT2HTML gives you full control of PowerPoint HTML output, helps meet Section 508 accessibility requirements
Prep4PDF preserves interactivity in PowerPoint presentations when you convert to PDF
Image Export converts PowerPoint slides to JPG, PNG, GIF, WMF and and more

Problem

You're giving a presentation using your own computer and every time you click a hyperlink, PowerPoint pops up an annoying warning about how your linked file might contain a virus.

They're your own files. The least of your worries is giving yourself a virus and if the files were infected, you already HAVE a virus. At this point, all you want is a bit of peace, quiet and freedom from gratuitous nattering like this.

Solution

See this if you're using Office 2007

This page on Microsoft.com explains how to change the Windows registry to prevent these warnings on your own computer for earlier versions.

This involves a complex set of manual edits to the Windows registry, something you may not feel comfortable doing.

If you haven't moved to 2007 yet, no problem, PowerPoint MVP Chirag Dalal has you covered. He's created a small program that makes the required registry changes for you (and another that changes them back). Get them here

Remember: The registry change only affects your computer, not anyone else's. If you need to distribute presentations to others, you'll want to turn the warning back on while testing your presentation so you know what'll happen when other people view your work.

Keep in mind also that this registry change won't affect the PowerPoint 2003 viewer, just PowerPoint 2003 itself. The viewer will still issue warning messages when you click hyperlinks.

A visitor to the PowerPoint Newsgroup (thank you, Ramin!) suggested linking to a web page and letting the web page contain the links to the files that trigger the warning messages in PowerPoint.

Search terms:hyperlink,warning

Contents © 1995-2008 Stephen Rindsberg, Rindsberg Photography, Inc. and members of the MS PowerPoint MVP team. You may link to this page but any form of unauthorized reproduction of this page's contents is expressly forbidden.

content authoring & site maintenance by

Friday - The Automatic FAQ Maker