Hyperlink changes from to 20- 20 when clicked in Excel

Question

In an Excel 2013 sheet, I have a hyperlink that points to a corporate website. When I right-click and choose "edit hyperlink," the following appears in the address box, and it is accurate:

https://myserver.company.com/home/default.html#article?id=1203291003

However, regardless of whether I use the left, middle, or right-click to access a hyperlink, the same thing happens: IE11 opens and I receive an http 404 error because the link (which is displayed below) cannot be located.

https://myserver.company.com/home/default.html%20-%20article?id=1203291003

What might be changing # to%20-%20? This is quite strange considering the URL doesn't have any spaces and %20 is a space.

Answer 1

This is a known issue with MS Excel. Basically, the hash/pound (#) sign is a valid character to use in a file name but is not accepted in hyperlinks in Office documents. The conversion to %20-%20 appears to be by design. If you can set another browser as your default, even temporarily for testing, it might work.