General Failure clicking on URL in Outlook when using Firefox

I use Outlook for my email and Firefox for my default browser. If you are like me, you get lots and lots of emails with links to websites in your email. An annoyance that has been plaguing me for several years now is that when I click on a link in Outlook, I get a message that says, "General Failure. The URL was: ...." and it tells me where I wanted to go. In the past, the URL always opened anyway so I just clicked OK on the message and went about my business.



However, with the upgrade to Outlook 2010 and more importantly Firefox 7.0.1 I get the message but the URL will not open, leaving me with a great big frowny face and no webpage to browse.

Here is an example of what I would get if I tried to open a link in an email from one of my favorite emails, Think Geek:

If this were the end of the story, I would not be posting this. If you too have a frowny face from frustration, simply follow the steps below to not only get the webpage to open, but to also get rid of the message all together.

1. Close Firefox and Outlook (make sure they are completely closed, i.e. downloads window, popups, etc)
2. Open Regedit by clicking on Start -> Run -> Regedit
1. In Vista or Windows 7 you can click Start and type in Regedit in the search area. Make sure you right click and open "As Administrator"

3. ***WARNING*** Changing keys in the registry can mess up your system. Please make sure you are comfortable using regedit and follow the steps EXACTLY!!
1. Back up your registry by going to File -> Export
2. You can back up the whole registry, or browse to the key we are going to change and just back it up. Either way, make sure you have a backup in case you need to revert back.

4. Browse to HKEY_Classes_Root\FirefoxURL\Shell\Open\ddeexec

1. You should see a key named Default with a value data of  "%1",,0,0,,,,
2. Double click it to edit the value data

3. Clear the value data so that it is blank

4. Click OK
5. Close Regedit
6. Open Outlook and now when you click on an embedded URL not only will you not see the message, but FF will open automatically.