Error message appears when clicking on links to <instance> inside MS Office Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents 

 

Problem

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When SAML is enabled on your instance and you try to open a URL that is inside a Microsoft Office document (such as an Excel spreadsheet, Word document or Powerpoint presentation), the error message "Cannot Validate SAML Response" appears.

 

 

Symptoms

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Check for the following symptoms to determine if you are facing this limitation:

• Your instance has SAML Authentication or Multi SSO Authentication enabled
• Are are able to open the same URL or link on the browser without seeing the error
• The links are inside the Microsoft Office Document as hyperlinks

  

Cause

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This is a known issue with Microsoft Office products (for example, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) and their interaction with hyperlinks that are protected by single sign-on.


 
Resolution

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A suggested workaround is to save the document as a PDF, which enables the hyperlinks to function correctly. Note that the hyperlinks work from within other document formats such as PDF and Outlook email messages without the error message. 

Alternatively, you can manually copy the hyperlink and paste it into the address bar of
your web browser.

For information from Microsoft, see Use a SAML 2.0 identity provider to implement single sign-on.