Outlook: Emoji reacts not being shown to other users

Question

Users in one of our tenants are experiencing inconsistent behavior with Emoji Reacts in Outlook

Let's call the users ******@tenant1.com, ******@tenant1.com, and ******@tenant1.com

All users mentioned have Business Premium licenses.

Behavior:

• John sends an email to Mary, both react > John sees both reacts, Mary only sees her own
• Mary sends an email to John, both react > Mary sees both reacts, John only sees his own
  TL;DR - Sender sees both, recipient only sees own reactions
• Ryan sends email to both John and Mary > Neither see each other's reacts
  • Sometimes after 5-10 minutes, ONE of the users will SOMETIMES see both reactions
  • Usually, they don't see either

Attempted Troubleshooting:

• Logging into OWA
• Different network on PC
• Different emails
  • Replicated tests between john and mary using two new users
  • Example: ******@tenant1.com and ******@tenant1.com
  • Behavior is the same with new users
• Updating Outlook locally on all affected user's machines
• Switching between New/Classic Outlook
• Clearing Edge cache, Outlook Cache
• Windows Updates
• Searching countless KBs, forum posts, etc
• Created mail flow rule to set message header 'x-ms-reactions' to 'allow' for both external and internal senders
• Re-assigned user licenses (converted to shared, removed licenses, waited a few minutes, reassigned same licenses)

Previous posts have stated this behavior (only sender seeing reacts) is expected behavior. This is not true, as per Microsoft themselves:

How emoji reacts are intended to work:

Source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/reactions-in-microsoft-outlook-06315501-a790-4a2a-90c1-fbc89d84c393

Reacting to an email

When you receive an email, and you want to send a reaction:

1. Select the reactions button near the top of the message window and you'll see a gallery of reactions you can choose from.
2. Select your reaction and it will be sent to the message sender and displayed for anyone else in the conversation.

I also have a support ticket open with Microsoft, but their suggestions have not helped us identify the problem. Please let me know if there is something I am missing

Answer 1

Hi @Bryan McMillan

Welcome to our forum!

Based on your description, I note that you have been contacted by Microsoft and recommend that you continue to keep in touch.

Based on my test, I have the same results as you, and the recipient can't see my response. Also, when I give myself an email response, the response only appears briefly and then disappears.

At present, what I can do for you is to submit feedback for your request and I have post here, and you could vote for it. If you have any suggestions or ideas, It's suggested that you could post here. Hope Microsoft will notice this in the future. Thank you for your understanding and support!

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