You receive a "The page cannot be displayed" error message when you click a hyperlink to a PowerPoint 2002 presentation

In Microsoft Internet Explorer, when you click a hyperlink or type a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, you receive the following error message:

This problem may occur because PowerPoint does not accept and pass user authentication information to the Web server when it requests the file.

This problem only occurs on Web sites on which the Anonymous option is disabled, and either of the following conditions is true:

• Domain Authentication is being used but external access to an intranet is not available.
• Basic Authentication (clear text passwords) is being used.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Office XP. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Temporary Workarounds

To temporarily work around this problem, use any of the following methods.

Method 1

If you are prompted to save or open the presentation after you click the hyperlink, click Save, save the presentation to your local hard disk, and then open it from there.

If you receive the error message after you click the hyperlink, go back to the hyperlink, right-click it, and then click Save Target As on the shortcut menu.

Method 2

Modify the Web server that is hosting the PowerPoint file to allow anonymous access to the directory that contains the file.

Method 3

Save the presentation as HTML. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint.
2. On the File menu, click Save as Web Page.
3. Click Publish.
4. Click Browse. Browse to and select the Web folder onto which you want to save the presentation.
5. Click Publish.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section. This problem was first corrected in Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 1.