Email body goes blank after email forward or reply

Charles Gilman 70 Reputation points
2023-06-13T17:49:50.6233333+00:00

Hello all,

I have been receiving complaints from employees that sometimes when you reply or forward an external email the email body in the original message disappears. It's kept in the body of the first forward/reply sometimes, but not always. There isn't a way to recover the information from the email body in Outlook.

After the email body of the original email has been cleared from Outlook you can go to OWA and find that the issue is there as well. The same email in OWA has had the body wiped from it. Since we can't tell when it's going to happen we haven't been able to see if the same email in OWA has the email body removed after they reply/forward the email or if it's gone before the reply/forward. I've even noticed it happens when replying and forwarding external emails from Outlook for mobile.

If you have third party services, like I have Mimecast, I can go into the user's Mimecast inbox and find the original email with the body still intact. I can resend that email to their Outlook inbox from Mimecast so they have the original message with the body in Outlook and they don't have to keep going back to Mimecast to read the email, but that's a very annoying temporary solution for most of them.

Even though the issue shouldn't be just related to Outlook, I have tried creating a new mail profile for Outlook, making sure all unused add-ins are disabled in Outlook, and the font settings are the default font settings. Any insight as to why or how this is happening would be greatly appreciated.

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  1. Karl Schenfelt 10 Reputation points
    2024-08-19T14:11:07.47+00:00

    I am having the same issue.

    It has to do with blocked pictures. If you download the pictures (and lose your privacy protection), the original Email will "Stay." If you don't download the pictures, the original Email will go blank.

    It is a bug that does need fixing.

    2 people found this answer helpful.
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  3. Freddy Pot 0 Reputation points
    2023-07-10T18:58:13.36+00:00

    I am having the same issue.

    The email is there in the OWA but the email body in the client is blank.


  4. Karl Schenfelt 0 Reputation points
    2024-08-19T15:03:46.65+00:00

    It has to do with blocked pictures. If you download pictures (and give away your privacy) your original Email will remain when you forward or reply to an Email that contains a blocked picture.

    If you don't download the picture, you will need to copy the Email, or get the original contents from the forwarded or replied Email in your sent folder and copy those contents back into the original Email by editing it.

    I think it's a bug unless it's a way of punishing you for protecting your privacy.

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