# "The website hosting this PDF blocked the request."

**What you are seeing**

"The website hosting this PDF blocked the request."

---

## Why it happens

The file sits behind a login, a signed or expiring URL, a firewall or a bot manager. The proxy fetches from a server with none of the reader's cookies, so anything that depends on the reader's session fails.

---

## What to do

Download the file once and attach it to the page, then point the macro at the attachment.

---

## Limits that apply here

| **Limit**                        | **Value**                                | **What happens**                                                                                                                                                                                        |
| -------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Link rules enforced by the proxy | Https only; no bare IP addresses; no int | Http links are upgraded to https and then required to be https. Blocked outright: localhost, example.com/.org/.net, test.com, anything under amazonaws.com or amazon.com, nip.io, and the .corp .domain |

---

## Related

["This file does not look like a PDF."The address returned something that is not a PDF (an HTML login or error page is the usual](https://help.gocapable.com/pdf-embed/this-file-does-not-look-like-a-pdf.html)

["This PDF is password protected."Password-protected documents are not supported and there is no place to enter a passphrase](https://help.gocapable.com/pdf-embed/this-pdf-is-password-protected.html)

[Export and published sitesThe rest of this family.](https://help.gocapable.com/pdf-embed/export-and-published-sites.html)

---

_Found it? Good._