Windows 7 - html links in word do not work now

Hi Windows 7 Pro experts:

A friend told me one time, the defficnition of an EXPERT was anyone 25 miles from home.

With that said, my question is this: I have been saving links to web sites for several years by listed them in Microsoft Word. By holding down the CTRL + THE LINK the browser would take me to the link. Now for some reason I get a message that an entity in my computer is blockiing this. I have, temporarly disabled Malwarebytes, anti-virul then reduced browser restrictions to about zero, with no help. I put them all back to normal.

Anyone have an idea about what is causing this????

Firewall? For example, I use ZoneAlarm and can block apps from accessing the Internet.

Regards,
GEWB

Yup, firewall is my guess too. Allow Word to access the Internet and you should be good to go.
How to do that depends in your firewall...to see if that is the problem, you could disable temporarily to see if you links work. If they do, then it is your firewall (most commercial firewalls have pretty good instructions on how to allow a program to get through).