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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Hi,Michael,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Yes, this is a Microsoft issue, not a Shib issue. We’ve even seen it in our legacy SSO (non-Shib) setup. Microsoft tries to pass the blame to the SSO in this
KB article:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899927">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899927</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">But at least they consider it to be a known issue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">There is a registry hack that will tell Ofice apps to open the link in the browser and not Office. It’s not ideal, though, since it does meana registry modification.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Good luck, and if anyone’s found another way around this, I’d love to hear about it, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Keith<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif""> users-bounces@shibboleth.net [mailto:users-bounces@shibboleth.net]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>McDermott, Michael<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, September 28, 2011 12:13 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Shib Users<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Dealing with links embedded in Excel<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";background:white">Dear Shib Users,</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">A crafty user has created a report that generates an excel file which will display a list of errors for their problem domain and a link to the specific
record in the web application that manages that domain. The application is protected by shibboleth. All of the individual links work, they just do not work in when clicking them in Excel in Windows.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">It seems that this problem is documented:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><a href="http://shibboleth.1660669.n2.nabble.com/links-in-Microsoft-office-break-shibboleth-login-td5186632.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:#0000CC">http://shibboleth.1660669.n2.nabble.com/links-in-Microsoft-office-break-shibboleth-login-td5186632.html</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><a href="https://groups.google.com/group/shibboleth-users/browse_thread/thread/f5947a2e99fff37e/11b670f90f9cd550?lnk=gst&q=word+link+problem&pli=1#11b670f90f9cd550" target="_blank"><span style="color:#0000CC">https://groups.google.com/group/shibboleth-users/browse_thread/thread/f5947a2e99fff37e/11b670f90f9cd550?lnk=gst&q=word+link+problem&pli=1#11b670f90f9cd550</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">After some debugging, this is clearly an Excel problem, the root of which seems to be that Excel makes the initial http call and does not invoke the
browser until it gets an http 200 response code (and in a normal interaction there would be a few redirects before you get to the login page). The effect is that the user's browser arrives at the Shibboleth IdP login screen, not knowing which SP this request
is for and so the process fails after login. I have tried to work through this with both SP and IdP initiated AuthN and since they both use redirects, the error is the same.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">On the surface it seems like there is a problem with Shibboleth, particularly since a diligent, non technical user will paste the link into their browser
to confirm it works at all before calling.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">As in the preceding posts, I do not have a work around in Excel (e.g. a way to make Excel open the browser and then pass in the link), so if someone
does, please let me know.<br clear="all">
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">At the very least this might server as a warning to others that this issue exists and your IdP works fine.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">-- <br>
Michael J. McDermott<br>
Lead Developer, Identity and Access Management<br>
Brown University<br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
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