A bug in Microsoft Word’s Insert Hyperlink feature

Try this in Microsoft Word 2007:

  1. Open a new document.
  2. Type the following: http:// some.domain.com
    Note that there’s a space after the two forward slashes and before the domain name.
  3. Select the text you just typed, and press Control-K (the shortcut key to Insert Hyperlink).
  4. Note that nothing happens.
  5. Go to the Insert ribbon and click the Hyperlink button (essentially the same thing as #3 above).
  6. Note that nothing happens.
  7. Edit the text you previously typed, removing the space after the two forward slashes, so the text looks like this: http://some.domain.com
  8. Select the text you just edited (all of it), and press Control-K.
  9. Note that you now see the Insert Hyperlink dialog.

Apparently, Word is trying to verify your URL before opening the Insert Hyperlink dialog, and aborting when it runs into the problem with the incorrectly formatted URL. The good thing is that Word doesn’t crash outright. The bad thing is that it shouldn’t work this way.