Microsoft Office: How to fix double slash autocorrection in links

Some applications (web servers, etc.) support hyperlinks with double-slash (//) after specifying the protocol (http://, ftp://, etc.).
IBM Lotus Domino is such an application. A link "notes://server/1111111111//2222222222/" is correct.

During the migration from the IBM Lotus Domino mail system to Microsoft Exchange, it turned out that all Microsoft Office applications (Outlook in particular) correct links (even in incoming emails) with two empty slashes "//" for a single slash "/" automatically. We failed to find a solution in the Internet to change this behavior.

Demonstration:

Finally, PFE Microsoft engineer has found (in the archive) a magic key in the registry that disables the auto-correction function!

Path: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common"

Name: "AllowConsecutiveSlashesInUrlPathComponent"

Type: "REG_DWORD"

Value: "1"

And it works!

Add a key using the command line:

REG ADD "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Common" /f /v AllowConsecutiveSlashesInUrlPathComponent /t REG_DWORD /d 1

Add a key using the .reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Common]
"AllowConsecutiveSlashesInUrlPathComponent"=dword:00000001

This solution is not recommended by Microsoft and there is no certainty that this feature will not be closed in any update.

Applies to:

• Microsoft Office 2003
• Microsoft Office 2007
• Microsoft Office 2010
• Microsoft Office 2013
• Microsoft Office 2016