I have some text that is a hyperlink, that opens up a webpage when the user clicks on the link. I have found that if you assign an action to the onclick event, this overrides the html in the text and does not open the hyperlink.

I attempted to use the external URL action, however that causes an error, and attempts to concatenate the actual url, with a link to the directory where my files are saved.  

Hi, Aaron,

Onclick event always has more priority than usual link (that's not CourseLab's feature - it is usual for all browsers). That's why onclick overrides href.

To the error: please give us more details about the link, that causes the error.