Annoying Security messages using MS Word 2007 and Celestia

[fsgregs]

Hi everyone. I have discovered a really annoying problem with the interface between MS Word 2007 and Celestia. Cel:URL's are hyperlinks that are associated with Celestia when the program is first installed. If a user embeds that cel:URL in an MS Word document, and a user clicks on the link, Celestia will respond to it, and MS Word will not try to do anything with it. ... that is .... until MS Word 2007 came out!

MS Word 2007 now has a new security feature. If you click on a cel:URL hyperlink that the program does not recognize as a legitimate internet web link, it will open a security warning menu, warning you that this hyperlink looks suspicious, and asking you if you really want to open it? If you say "yes", then the link opens in Celestia OK. If you say no, then Word will block the cel:URL.

The problem is ... there is no way to disable the warning message. EVERY TIME a user clicks on a cel:URL with MS Word 2007, the damned warning box pops up. Since my educational activities contain up to 50 or 60 cel:URLs per document, this can get very annoying, particularly when used in a classroom setting. Several teachers who are running MS Word 2007 have reported the problem to me.

I contacted Microsoft, who researched the issue and claims there is no way to disable the warning message.

Have any other users who use MS Word 2007 discovered the problem? More importantly, has anyone figured out how to disable the warning message?

I will eventually have to convert all the Activities to Acrobat pdf files. Unfortunately, I need Acrobat Pro to do it, and the program is a bit expensive.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

Frank

[Guckytos]

Hi Frank,

could it perhaps be that you would need to add the path to Celestia to the trusted paths in Office 2007?
We had in the office a similar problem, that the damned programm wouldn't execute some macros until we found out how and where to add the path to them in some of the dialogues. Perhaps you could try it out and see if it helps (don't ask me where exactly you would find it, I could probably show it to you in front of a PC but not explain).
But in your case that would mean, all installations would have to follow the same directory structure which is unlikely.

Why would you absolutely need Acrobat Pro to do it? Wouldn't one of the following tools be good enough:
PDF X change
7-PDF (German, with english manual)
PDF Creator

Best regards,

Guckytos

[BobHegwood]

Frank,

I don't know if this is related or not, but I have also run into another problem
with the CEL/URL links while trying to install the Celestia-151 Educational package.
None of the lnk files can be un-zipped to my Vista system either. They generate
an error which says that the files "were not found, and cannot be located."

I downloaded and installed the new? Microsoft Wordview program and installed it
prior to attempting to install Celestia151-ED, but I could not extract these file
no matter what I did.

The result was an educational package which simply did not work correctly on
my system.

Just FYI...

Thanks, Brain-Dead

[fsgregs]

Guckytos:

Thanks for the tips. However, none of the programs seem to work properly to convert the activity documents to pdf. There are lots of graphics to position properly on the page, and getting the cel:URL's to work when clicked on, has given me trouble. Open Office 3.0 for example, can convert an MS Document to PDF and allow me to position the graphics properly, but none of the cel:URL's work when I click on them after creating a pdf file with OpenOffice.

If anyone has run across a free, or low cost DOC to PDF file editor that handles cel:URL links, please let me know.


Bob:

If I understand your statement, you tried to unzip the Celestia151-ED package in Vista, and the unzip failed because the .ink shortcut files could not be found? That is really strange. Those files are supposed to be in the "Activity_cels" folder. Initially, when installing the base program and educational base package, the folder is empty, but as you download and install each Activity in the series and unzip it and install it in the base Celestia151-ED folder, an .ink file is placed in that folder. I have no idea why the zip program would fail. I just downloaded the package on motherlode, and it unzips fine on my WinXP system.

For Celestia151-ED to work properly, you must first download, unzip and install the base program (CED-151-WIN_setup.zip). Unzip it and let it install. Then, download the (Educational_Base_package-151.zip), unzip and install next. Then, install the first Activity by downloading, unzipping, etc.

Please let me know what happened when you tried to do that. Send me a PM or email me at fsgregs@comcast.net. thanks Bob

Frank

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[jogad]

The convertion to PDF works pretty well with open office.
The only drawback is that lauching the first celestia cnfigation link doesn't work.
The same annoying thing happended also when trying to launch the script to enable sounds.
But other links work excepted if you must click on an image to lauch them.

If you accept a slighty different presentation your may envisage to convert in html instead of PDF.
In this case you have only one big page, but all links works.

To show an example I converted (with MS word 2003) your first activity document.
You can see the result here:
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/jdolouma/Activity_1&2-151-The_Universe.htm

This is just to see the presentation. Of course since the document is not in the right place on your disk, links to shorcuts and celx don't work.
For me the result is pretty good if you take care to adjust the width of the window as small as possible but letting see the firt frame (1 - Background information) at its largest size.

With the document at the right place, all links work well with Internet Explorer 8.
If you want to avoid confirmation messages for celURLs you have only to configure that in the options of the browser.
I don't know with other browsers than IE8