Restriction on outlook as how many characters can be sent as hyperlink.

Question

1.What is the Restriction on outlook as how many characters can be sent as hyperlink.?

1. How many characters can be attached as a Masked URL ?

Answer 1

Hi @Agadi, Niteesh Veerappa

Thank you for posting your question in the Q&A Forum. 

In Classic Outlook for Windows, extremely long URLs (for example, 11,000+ characters) are not supported as clickable hyperlinks. If a URL is excessively long, Outlook may prevent the message from being sent or the hyperlink may not function correctly.

You may still include the full 11,000+ characters as plain text within the email body. In this case, it will display correctly, but it will not function as an active clickable link.

If a clickable link is required, we recommend shortening the URL or sharing the content using an alternative format, such as an attachment or a file containing the complete link. This is the expected behavior in Outlook Desktop.

For information on customizing or changing the display text for a hyperlink in Outlook, please refer to the official Microsoft support article: Customize the text for a hyperlink in Outlook - Microsoft Support

You may also share your feedback through Outlook (Help > Feedback) or the Microsoft Feedback Portal here: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/forum/89a8afa3-2e1c-ec11-b6e7-0022481f8472

If you need any further clarification, please let us know.

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Answer 2

In classic Outlook for Windows, the key URL-length behavior documented is:

1. For regular hyperlinks in message bodies, Outlook historically had an internal limit of 2,084 characters per URL. When Safe Links wrapped very long URLs and the 2,084th character was an escaped character, Outlook could not send the message and showed the error “Cannot send this item.”
2. This issue has been fixed in newer Outlook builds. The URL limit was increased from 2,084 to 8,192 characters in Outlook Desktop build 16116.10000 and later (for supported channels) together with a required Windows update.

So, for both plain and masked hyperlinks (where display text is different from the underlying URL), the effective limit for the URL itself in updated Outlook Desktop is 8,192 characters. The display text (mask) is not called out as having a separate, specific character limit in the provided context.

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References:

• Outlook error “Cannot send this item” when replying to an email
• Limits for activation and JavaScript API for Outlook add-ins