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?
73 Replies
@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!
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/
- 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...
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.
