Forum Discussion
Outlook no longer checking access to links
Up until very recently, if you added a link to a document residing in SharePoint to Outlook and inputted the user you wished to share the document with it would do a check to see if that user had access.
When the user had access the link would remain blue and when they didn't it would turn red giving you options to Manage Access or send it as an attachment.
This feature worked as recently as Monday this week, which is the last time I used it.
Now when you paste a link it states that "we couldn't verify that recipients can access this link" and gives options to retry or send anyway.
Not only that, but within the document itself (in the case of M65 apps), the option sporadically shows up but more often that not isn't there.
(E.g., in Word: Open Share (top right) > Share (from dropdown menu) > Select Ellipsis (...) > Options here used to be Share in Outlook and Share as Attachment but latter feature is often missing now).
This was a quick way of adding a file to an email as an attachment.
Our users have found the method of adding as an attachment via SharePoint Sites to be quite difficult and labrous. The recent sites options seldom show most recently accessed sites and when they do, it often requires a lot of moving backwards and forwards through folders, especially when attaching multiple files.
It's annoying as the feature that was there was great and a useful way to share files in SharePoint externally as attachments, I'm just not sure why it's gone.
Has anyone else encountered this?
Cheers,
Chris
7 Replies
I've recently encountered this again in 2025 (don't use Web App or New Outlook if I can help it as it doesn't have the same features as Classic Outlook - particularly around Add-ins).
The heart of the ticket was finding out why the authentification feature no longer worked, and as a result, the ability to change links into attachments where users hadn't access.It would seem that this functionality is another win for Classic Outlook as we were recently told in a ticket that this feature is no longer supported in 'New' Outlook and Outlook Web App.
The alternative to adding attachments is either using the File Picker (which is TERRIBLE in OWA) or downloading and reuploading files as attachments.
The alternative to finding out if the user has access may just be to send the file and wait for a reply if the user can or cannot access the file.
Site admins can check for user permissions as well beforehand, but this would be a tedious task if attempting to send multiple files across multiple sites.
The article linked in our recent ticket was from March 2024, 2/3 months after we began encountering issues here in this discussion, Inserting a link as an attachment has changed in Outlook Desktop - Microsoft SupportTruly confusing as to why they'd get rid of that feature for those using New Outlook/OWA.
I've dealt with no other product where the older version is head and shoulders better than the newest version.- This issue was resolved for us last Friday.
Didn't see anything on Admin Centre Service Health site regarding it but glad to have it back.CCChris_Martin thanks for sharing! 🙂
One of our users reported the same issue today also. Seems to be an isolated case for us though; not everyone has been experiencing it.
Has anyone been able to isolate the cause?
We've tried both new outlook and classic outlook. We've also tried on these two new outlook versions (Microsoft Outlook Version 1.2024.111.100 (Production), Client Version is 20240112004.11 and Microsoft Outlook Version 1.2024.103.100 (Production) Client Version is 20240112004.12) but so far it looks like the issue is happening to one user vs to a specific client version.
- One of our users discovered this problem last week too. Using the web client I get the option to attach the file if I right click on the link but the link turns red no matter who I add as a recipient. It goes red for users with access to the link in Teams (SharePoint) and for users without existing access.
This is an important feature for my users so I will publish the work around, but can someone at Microsoft please update this post when the issue has been resolved?
Harks CCChris_Martin , yes we are experiencing this issue with a few of our Outlook desktop clients but not all. Must be a bug in a recent release that hasn't been pushed out to all our users yet. Temporary workaround is to use Outlook on the Web, which is correctly displaying the links as blue if the recipients have access and red with warning if not.
Hoping Microsoft replies soon as this is a valuable feature and it's causing some churn for our users, who are afraid to send links as they think the recipients won't be able to open them.
--Lynn
- It seems to be all of ours, but then everyone is on the same release version so that would make sense.
Thanks for the workaround!
I tried it yesterday but didn't seem to work but does today so I'll be pushing out a guide to use Outlook in browser for this in the interim.
The very same, it was our go to for all things attachments as it was so simple to follow and the recipient check does the work for you.
It hasn't popped up in the M365 Admin Centre - Service Help either.
I'll update this if I've any progress anyway.
