Forum Discussion
outlook.live.com not showing external images in messages
I can't get outlook.live.com to show images. I'm using an ancient account -- msn.com migrated to outlook.com, if that matters. But I also have an Office 365 subscription I'm using the service in a desktop browser.
Up to a few weeks ago, things were fine. But now mailing lists that I subscribe to (like Harbor Freight Tools advertisements, or The Wall Street Journal, or Redfin search matches, or ...) aren't showing images. This makes email pretty much unusable, since there's no UI to explicitly allow images for that email message.
I've added the email sender to my contacts and to safe senders. The mailing list is known to Outlook in the options -- seems like that's allowed, too.
When I try to search for this issue, I end up hitting answers from 2012 which describe settings and menus that aren't in my UI.
How can I get images to load? Why did they break?
I tried digging a bit deeper:
I'm looking at a message in the browser that has blocked images. If I'm looking at the message itself, I see this HTML for one of the blocked images:
<img data-imagetype="External" blockedimagesrc="https://assets.bounceexchange.com/assets/uploads/users/4035/042221/HarborFreight/tc1-155.jpg" width="155" alt="automotive" class="x_width_95" style="display:block; margin:0 auto; border:0; white-space:pre; text-align:center">
but if I view the message's original source (using three dots / view / message source) then I find this HTML for the same image:
<img src="https://assets.bounceexchange.com/assets/uploads/users/4035/042221/HarborFreight/tc1-155.jpg" width="155" style="display:block;margin=:0 auto;border:0;white-space:pre;text-align:center;" alt="automotive" class="width_95">
So it's very clear that outlook.live.com is translating the HTML and blocking the image deliberately. How can I make it stop doing that?
Hi Microsoft team,
Based on a thread on Reddit, I think we are many folks who are having this same issue as described by mikeblas. It started last week for many of us from what I can see. I logged a Ticket with Microsoft Outlook team but so far no luck with a fix.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Outlook/comments/pqf4q0/outlooklivecom_not_showing_images/
I am experiencing the same issue. Images have not been showing now for roughly 1 week. Microsoft - let's get this fixed. Something was updated recently and that is why this situation has arisen.
- arrange messages by conversation is an ingenious workaround, but it's not for me... it messes up how I organize things and the conversation mode is counterproductive for me. mikeblas seems to be on to something when he found the blocked display code. Microsoft should just fix it... but they seem to be ignoring the problem...
@mikeblas I'm having the same issue. It was fine but for the last few week all images are broken and there's no option to 'show images.' I was waiting patiently for Microsoft to fix this but they don't seem to care.
Solution (workaround):
Unfortunately, most emails are useless without images, so I set up a new gmail account and have outlook forward all my email to there. The images show up there. It's be better if MS fixed the issue, but, in the meantime, I can still read my emails.
- Great idea!
- Following this conversation as I'm having a similar issue
I too have spent too long trying different settings over the past week.
My Desktop MS Office Pro 2016 Outlook shows all the graphics, so it's just the mail server with issues as everyone is saying. Treated like junk mail? Something has gone on with the spam/junk mail, now instead of 20 ~ 50 a day, it's 150 ~ 200+ a day. Can't phone, so junk email? Overwhelmed the system, I bet.
- Retired18, I've noticed a very large number of spam/junk messages suddenly as well. About the same time messages no longer displayed graphics in HTML formatted emails. Most of the spam emails have random cryptic characters/numbers appended to the end of the subject line, so they are easy to identify and delete immediately.
Coincidence? Hmm... I think not. Methinks Microsoft has a problem on their hands. Their mail system is seriously broken, their spam identifiers are broken, and they can no longer process HTML-formatted emails correctly. Forcing users into "conversation" mode is not UX-friendly.
@ have same issue and it was changing not over night. 1) to open first email I had to do it twice. 2) images dissappears around 21st of September. 3)I did not run any updates, so it's MSFT issue 4) same behaviour in all browsers, regardless which OS is used.
I think is must be some new setting in outlook.live.com because I have the problem when using my main account in any computer, but other accounts in those same computers show the images without any problem.
I agree with everyone. It is a Microsoft issue. If I forward the emails to Yahoo or to Gmail, everything works fine and I can see all of the images.
Thing is - we can complain about this forever. I would rather do something productive. Does Microsoft read our posts? If not, how do we communicate our concern to people at Microsoft so they can fix it?
same problem here. from another thread there is a work-around that is better than getting gmail: enable conversations and the images will show. worked for me.
I don't like conversation view, but rather tolerate it over no images which is horrible.
- I'm having the same problem. I can't see any images in my email messages. I went through all my outlook settings and nothing fixes it. (I refuse to use Conversation View as a fix - it's the worst!) I don't have any chrome extensions causing a blockage that I can tell. I have a paid subscription (an old MSN account), so they darn well better fix this.
- Yesterday (9/20) absolutely NO issues viewing my images whether I was using Chrome, Edge, or Chrome on iPhone, even Safari on iPhone. Today? Issues. I tried forwarding the email, and issues showed up. Shows up in the apps, not in the browser. As much as I detest conversation view, switched and it worked. Kudos to the person who figured it out. Images returned. Staying hopeful that Microsoft doesn't mess that up. I am curious as to why that is - conversation view has images, yet the other way doesn't? That is definitely a Microsoft error. But, glad everything is working out.
Problem exist on multiple browsers and PCs, so a Microsoft problem.
As a workaround I downloaded from the Microsoft Store the Mail and Calendar App for PC. It does not have this problem, and you can use to access your emails and calendar.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/mail-and-calendar/9wzdncrfhvqm?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
- That may be an awesome workaround for you, but there is a reason why I use mail in a web browser. I don't want the Mail and Calendar App installed on my system. Period. Microsoft needs to fix this. They broke it, they fix.
- I still have this issue, how was anyone able to solve it?
