[SOLVED] Encoded URL's are Re-Encoded When Clicked

Question

Some of our users here are copying URL's of relevant files [from one of our sites] and pasting them into Excel.
As the need arises, they refer back to the Excel document and click the link to retrieve the document.
When clicked the already-encoded URL's:
https://sub.domain/some/path/to/files/My%20Super%20Long%20File%20Name-Thats%20Already%20Encoded.pdf
Are getting encoded a second time, which result in a URL like:
https://sub.domain/some/path/to/files/My%2520Super%2520Long%2520File%2520Name-Thats%2520Already%2520Encoded.pdf
This naturally won't work because its now literally looking for a file called "My%20Super%20Long%20File%20Name-Thats%20Already%20Encoded.pdf" which of course doesn't exist.
The URL's in Excel appear normal in the cells themselves.
The editing the actual hyperlink confirms its also correct there as well.
The URL's also look normal in the formula bar.
I've reproduced this behavior on multiple company machines: Windows 7 x64 Enterprise SP1 with Office ProPlus 2010 32-bit.
I was also able to reproduce this on vanilla Windows 7 VM's in Hyper-V using Office ProPlus 2010 and 2013.  Although domain joined, they're in an OU with blocked inheritance enabled and no linked GPO's.
I can't figure out where the problem is: Excel, Windows, IIS or something else?

Answer 1

Hi,
I’ve done a test for this situation, but the url won’t change after reopening the file.
1. A pdf file in SharePoint, and the file name contains some spaces which is the same with customers.
2. Input the SharePoint URL into Excel, and each spaces has been replaced by %20
3. Then, I can open the file in IE
4. After I closed the website and excel file, I could open it in IE again and the URL didn’t change.
As you mentioned in the ticket “Are getting encoded a second time, which result in a URL like”, may I know if the re-encoding was done automatically or manually? Based on the test result, it won’t encode a second automatically.
If it is done manually, the issue should be most likely caused by the space character being encoded twice, because the space character is encoded as %20 as our two url show. However, based on your second url, it turned into %2520, Since the % character
is encoded as %25, it should be a result of a double encoded. Actually, URLs need their characters to be in a specific format, ASCII characters, so that browsers can correctly interpret and parse the data. For every ASCII character in URLs, it will be encoded
a string starting with %, and % is also an ASCII character in URLs and encoded to %25. If we double encode a URL, which results that every ASCII character in the URL will be encoded a string starting with %25, and that the URL becomes invalid. Therefore, I
suggest you name the file using
alpha-numeric
characters
only or do not encode it twice.
If it is done automatically, since you have reproduced the issue on multiple machines, could you please help check the following Excel settings in several machines to make comparisons with each other.
Excel Option>Advanced, Scroll to the General section and click Web Options, select Encoding
If it possible, would you mind sharing a test file with me to do a test from my end?
Regards,
Melon Chen
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