Login Redirection Problem from Office XP Apps

[Mike]

I can not figure out what is going on here. I hope somebody can please
help!!!

I've got an intranet ASP3 application running on a Win2k server. This
application requires a login, so the user must first go to the login.asp
page before accessing any other .asp page. I have set up a redirection
method so that if a user pastes a URL to an internal .asp page, I store the
URL in a session variable, then I direct them to the login page. After
logging in, if the session variable is not blank, then I redirect them to
that URL.

for example:

1. user pastes into IE6 address bar:
http://domain.com/myweb/viewdocument...number=0102200
2. the viewdocument.asp code contains at the top of the page:

if session.contents("isLoggedIn") = False then
session.contents("EntryURL") = "viewdocument.asp?" & request.querystring
response.redirect "login.asp"
end if
..... then the rest of the page is below where if the user was logged in it
would retrieve the document

3. the login page is displayed to the user. they enter their username and
password. the form on the login.asp page gets submitted to the
loginresponse.asp page which has the following logic:

if app.login(request.form("username"), request.form("password")) then
session.contents("isLoggedIn") = True
if session.contents("EntryURL") = "" then
response.redirect session.contents("EntryURL")
else
response.redirect "welcome.asp"
end if
else
response.write "Log in failed."
end if

This has worked perfectly for over a year... Until about 3 months ago. We've
noticed now that if you paste the URL into the IE6 address bar, the steps
above execute correctly taking you to the correct page after logging in. If
you click on the link from a Sametime message (Lotus sametime) or from a
Lotus Notes Email it also works.

What doesn't work is when you paste the URL into an Office Document (same
problem in Word, Excel, Powerpoint) and open the hyperlink from there. What
happens is it appears that the Session.Contents("EntryURL") is not being
captured because the user gets presented with the login form, but then after
logging in they get taken to the welcome page instead of the URL they
clicked on.

We've repeated this problem on several computers. They all are running
Windows XP with Office XP and IE6. It doesn't appear to be a problem on
Windows 98 computers. I can't understand what's going on. I thought it was
cache related, but I've cleaned out my cache and the problem doesn't go
away.

Your ideas are much appreciated. Thanks!