Forum Discussion
OWA Rich Link Preview: metadata returns HTTP 200 but preview card is never rendered
I am hoping someone from the Outlook team or anyone familiar with the Outlook on the web Link Preview pipeline can help with a reproducible issue that has already been investigated extensively through Microsoft Support.
This is not a request for a new feature. It concerns the existing Rich Link Preview functionality that Microsoft currently documents and exposes through Outlook/Exchange configuration.
The problem
When a public URL is entered into a new Outlook on the web message, Outlook recognises the URL but displays only the normal blue hyperlink. No title, description, image or Rich Link Preview card is inserted.
I have reproduced this using multiple unrelated public URLs, including:
- Microsoft.com
- Adobe(dot)com
- YouTube(dot)com
The same behaviour occurs across multiple browsers and private/incognito sessions.
Configuration already confirmed
Both relevant Exchange settings are enabled:
- Mailbox LinkPreviewEnabled = True
- Organisation LinkPreviewEnabled = True
The Outlook on the web Preview links in email option is also enabled and messages are composed in HTML.
The important technical finding
Chrome Developer Tools shows that Outlook correctly detects the URL and calls Microsoft’s own preview service:
urlp.asm.skype.com/v1/url/info
The request completes successfully with:
HTTP 200 OK
The service returns valid rich-preview metadata including:
- Title
- Description
- Favicon
- Thumbnail
- Large thumbnail
For example, the YouTube test returned the correct YouTube title, description and valid thumbnail URLs.
However, Outlook then does nothing with that successful response.
The observable flow is:
URL recognised → Microsoft preview service called → HTTP 200 → complete valid metadata returned → Outlook fails to insert/render the Rich Link Preview
Further investigation shows:
- The returned title is never inserted into the compose DOM.
- Outlook never subsequently requests the thumbnail URL returned by the preview service.
- There is no LPNoLP suppression attribute on the hyperlink.
- The behaviour is reproducible across different URLs and browsers.
This appears to place the failure after successful metadata retrieval, at the point where Outlook should instantiate or insert the preview component.
Why I am raising this here
An active Microsoft Support case already contains HAR traces, PowerShell outputs, screenshots, Developer Tools evidence and controlled reproductions. I have spent months troubleshooting this and have reached the point where there is very little more an end user can reasonably isolate.
This also has genuine business impact. Professional email presentation matters when competing for customers. Businesses using other email platforms can present links professionally with rich previews while Outlook leaves us with plain blue hyperlinks despite the documented functionality being enabled.
I would therefore really appreciate input from someone familiar with Outlook/OWA engineering:
What condition or feature state could cause Outlook to successfully retrieve complete Link Preview metadata but then deliberately or incorrectly skip creation of the preview component?
Could this involve an Outlook feature flag, mailbox/tenant state, rollout configuration or another client-side gate after the urlp response?
I am specifically trying to get the existing documented functionality working correctly, rather than looking for a workaround.
I have also submitted the issue through the official Outlook Feedback Portal:
https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/dc18ed2e-119b-f111-9b47-7c1e52444ef6
If someone from Microsoft needs the existing support-case reference, I am happy to provide it privately.
2 Replies
Yes, the Link Preview feature hasn't been working for quite some time now (multiple years in fact).
It's a legacy feature that is based on the Skype framework. You actually have the correct request URL highlighted in your screenshot which shows that too.
Expect this feature to be retired entirely soon. I don't know whether (eventually) they'll replace it with a modern version as it still works in Teams. Then again, it was never brought over to Classic Outlook either, even though it worked (and still works) in OneNote for specific URL sources like YouTube. 🤷
Thank you Robert, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain this.
What you are saying unfortunately fits almost perfectly with what I have been seeing technically, and it finally helps make sense of why I have been going in circles with this for so long.
The difficult part for me is that this genuinely matters to my business. I have spent months trying to get Rich Link Preview working because professional presentation in customer-facing email matters when you are competing for attention, trust and credibility.
At the moment I am effectively stuck with plain blue hyperlinks while businesses using other email platforms can communicate in a much more polished and professional way. That may sound like a small UI feature from the outside, but when email is an important part of how you compete for business, it really isn't.
What makes the situation particularly frustrating is that Microsoft's current public Support documentation still says Link Preview should work in Outlook on the web, while Exchange Online still exposes LinkPreviewEnabled = True.
So from an end-user perspective, everything still tells me this is functionality I should have.
There are three things I am really hoping you might be able to shed some light on:
- Has Microsoft ever published an official retirement or deprecation notice for Link Preview?
For example, a Message Center communication, roadmap item, support notice or product-group statement. - Has the Outlook rendering component effectively been disabled while the legacy urlp.asm.skype.com service remains active?
That would fit the evidence almost perfectly, because Outlook successfully receives the complete preview metadata but never requests the returned thumbnail or inserts the preview into the DOM. - Most importantly, is this now a global Outlook product state, or could there still be a tenant / feature-flight condition that Microsoft can change?
That last question matters enormously to me because I am still actively working with Microsoft Support to get the documented functionality restored on my tenant, and I really do not want to give up on it if there is still a technical path to getting it working.
Thank you again, Robert. After months of troubleshooting, repeated checks and very little clarity, having someone who actually understands the Outlook side of this takes the time to explain what may be happening is genuinely appreciated.
- Has Microsoft ever published an official retirement or deprecation notice for Link Preview?
