Emailed HTML Rich Text Column Relative URLs

Scenario

• You have a list with a multi line text column with Enhanced Rich Text.
• The item contains links from the current server.
• You are emailing the contents of that column via SharePoint Designer 2007 Workflows

Issue

• The hyperlinks in the email do not work.
• The server name was automatically stripped from the URL, making a relative path.

Resolution

• Workaround:
• Add the following note to the field description notifying users of the problem and the workaround.
• "Use http://TinyUrl.com for hyperlinks and images on this site.  This will prevent emailed relative links."
• This works because SharePoint only strips URLs it recognizes as local URLs
• These are usually defined in the Alternate Access Mappings
• You can use any URL redirector
• Fixes:
• Use Visual Studio Workflows and replace the Relative URLs with Absolute URLs
• Intercept the outbound emails (on the SharePoint or Email servers) and replace
• Use a custom Workflow Action that prepends the servername into the URLs
• Use a different field type.  Try different custom Rich Text editor columns.