Introducing link format, a new copy and paste feature in Microsoft Edge!

1. Do you find the friendly link format helpful?
   No. I strongly dislike this. The reason I strongly dislike this is because I prefer to see the link which makes it quicker to tell if it is a problematic link or not.
2. Is the ability to occasionally paste the full, plain text URL a good solution for you?
   I prefer plain text URL.
3. Do you prefer the full, plain text URL format when you copy and paste all the time?
   Yes, strongly.
4. If you prefer the full, plain text URL format, were you able to find the settings to change the default without the assistance of this or other articles?
   No. I was highly frustrated over the change, and then searched for an article and was thankful I could change this back.
5. Do you have any other feedback about this feature you’d like to share with us?
   Please provide an option to remove top sites from the Edge iOS app. Despite this reply, I actually really like Edge for both iOS and desktop, and in particular, how well it syncs.

I am aware that URLs can be spoofed, whether they are in the "easy to read" format or the full URL text. However, the full text makes an A/B comparison if it is safe significantly easier to identify. This includes if the original text is malicious, or the spoofed text behind. In addition, in a trusted work environment, URL links are significantly easier to use and pinpoint.

Thank you for making this configurable.

It took me some effort to understand this feature, because the URL in the browser bar which I copy from may be look different from the Page Title that gets pasted.

My main use case is to copy URLs without formatting. Unfortunately, some applications don’t have a Paste As... option and I found myself copying into Notepad as an intermediary then pasting into that application, before coming across this tip.

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback.

  

HTML's ability to hide links under arbitrary text is a regularly-exploited risk, especially when the covering text looks like a URL. This feature encourages hi-risk URLs to use spoofy titles, ...

Here are a few links. Which ones would you prefer to see, e.g. in an email? Which ones would you trust? Are the underlying URLs displayed in the status bar or equivalent?

Introducing link format, a new copy and paste feature in Microsoft - Microsoft Community

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftedge/forum/msedge_search-msedge_win10/introducing-link-format-a-new-copy-and-paste/694e7e5c-5807-490c-907a-1cd0ab6a8cac?messageId=61bf1a57-a6e4-4ffe-8415-845b61deb6b6 

[...snip...]

Any of them could in fact be hiding a malicious URL, and it could be that a user faced with a simple text link like the first one is more likely to check its underlying URL than he is to check whether a long, impenetrable one is bogus, simply because it looks authentic.

It's a simple matter to use the alternative link format, either one-off (Ctrl-Shift-V) or always (options on edge://settings/shareCopyPaste). It rather sounds as if you're chiefly concerned on the part of other users.

Hi Noel,

Of these two options, the first one is a much bigger risk than the second one. The second one at least gives you the useful opportunity to see "answers.microsoft.com/" before the rest of the URL (which isn't very useful to see). The issue comes when someone spoofs a link that uses "answers.microsoft.com.something.else/" to "look" like a microsoft URL when it is actually a something.else URL. So yes, we understand URLs and can discuss these things, but most of my users do not understand URLs like we do. Unfortunately both appearances can be spoofed, and you can even replace the hyperlink for "microsoft.com" with something entirely different if you wanted to. At least with the second option you can "see" the true domain before following the link.

In many cases the 'title' of the page being pasted is much longer than the actual URL. For example:

https://www.microsoft.com/

or

Microsoft – Cloud, Computers, Apps & Gaming

in this case I'd prefer the shorter and more obvious URL that I can read.

Regarding question 4: If you prefer the full, plain text URL format, were you able to find the settings to change the default without the assistance of this or other articles?

I thought the change happened in Outlook and was trying to figure out how to stop it from happening when I eventually came across this article and realized the problem was actually Edge, not Outlook. And no, I would not have figured out that the setting existed without this article.

I'm not a fan of the new copy and paste setting, but at least it can be disabled. Hope this feedback helps.

Thanks,

-Derek C

This is an incredibly frustrating feature. While in some places it is nice to have it this way, copying into different softwares that might not be Microsoft ones - the actual link is lost. This is becoming a neusance when working in different databases. Pretty little text entered into Excel looses actual link during the conversion into a different environment. For what ever reason the Ctrl+Shft+V shortct does not work everywhere.

I wish you remove this annoying feature all together, or make a shortcut within the entire Microsoft environment that would work across all Office products and in other platforms supported by Windows. Please just get rid of this neussance.

1. No
2. No. Seems like it doesn't work in some applications, like Teams.
3. Yes.
4. No.
5. The new behaviour is just another example of "improvements" that is an annoying change that don't benefit users.