How to restore Outlook attached file and hyperlinks?

Mswg 21 Reputation points
2021-04-09T12:09:53.33+00:00

I have office 365 and I attach files or insert a hyperlink into an office outlook email I'm composing, what I see is the hidden hyperlink info and not the attached file icon or hyperlink in blue. How do I restore this? The last time this happened, I had to reinstall the office 365 office tools which take time and then I have to install any addon tools such as zoom etc. I realize that this type of info is related to Word and its styles, but I don't know why this occurs (it seems this problem pops up from time to time, but when it does, it stays there until its restored thru a reinstall).

attached files via menu or drag and drop shows, or copying and pasting the filename or a weblink into the email being created shows the following.

{EMBED Outlook.FileAttach}

{HYPERLINK "https://www.google.com/" }

Then when I send the file, and open it in the "sent" folder the hyperlink and attached file shows the information correctly, and doesn't show it like above.

Hence, how do I get the info within the {}'s changed back to what it should look like?

Outlook Management
Outlook Management
Outlook: A family of Microsoft email and calendar products.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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Accepted answer
  1. Jade Liang-MSFT 9,956 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
    2021-04-12T05:45:32.67+00:00

    Hi @Mswg ,

    Based on my research and test, the issue would occur when you have Word as the email editor and configured it to show Field Codes, and we could disable this via press Alt + F9 while composing a message, this keyboard shortcut could work for Outlook and Word to toggle between Fields Codes and their values, please kindly check if it could also work for you.

    If that's invalid, considering any add-ins may also affect it, in order to avoid the interference of add-ins, please try to restart your Outlook in safe mode to check if the issue has any difference.(Windows+R>type "outlook.exe /safe">enter)

    If the issue still exists, in order to perform more targeted test on my environment and further analyze your issue, please provide me with more information about your issue(such as client version and others).

    Hope your issue would be resolved soon.


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  1. Mswg 21 Reputation points
    2021-04-13T12:23:28.873+00:00

    Continued response 1000 char limit.
    The problem doesn't occur when attaching files by right-clicking on the filename and then sending it as an email attachment when the alt-f9 is activated since the filename appears in a separate status bar area. If the file is drag-n-dropped, or a copy and paste, or attached via the outlook menu button, this problem occurs.

    So one can either go into Word open a file or a blank document, select the alt-f9 to switch fieldcodes off and exit, or when in outlook and this problem occurs during email creation, to select alt-f9 to turn-off the fieldcodes from being displayed.
    Perhaps Microsoft needs to modify office so that: 1) when exiting word, the displaying of fieldcodes is reset back to a default of not-showing/reactivating on the next use of Word, 2). that outlook has its own configuration of these fieldcode settings to remember (prefer not remember) from one email creation to the next even though outlook uses word to do editing, 3). that a blank document created in word vs. a blank email created in outlook at the same time have independent copies (or are reset to a default config) of where-ever the fieldcodes enable/disable settings are stored at. This will eliminate possible confusion when going from one office application to another where this type of info is shared but only misleads one thinking something got corrupted or is broke!

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