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Starting in 2019 sometime, Windows Outlook began showing the original URL on hovering over a link in an email message.
Before that, it had only shown the rewritten safelinks version, which is very difficult to read and not at all helpful to someone who's trying to check what's behind that link's display text.
This was a vast improvement, and these days it is essential to be able to quckly check links if people are to have a chance of avoiding phishing traps.
It's particularly important for those users (probably the majority) who wouldn't understand the safelinks URL, and might well assume it's safe because it's a microsoft.com link.
Sadly, though, some time within the last few months my Outlook 365 has reverted to showing the unreadable safelinks URL in both the hover popup and the status bar at the bottom of the Outlook window. I currently have Windows Outlook Version 2404 Build 16.0.17531.20152 Click-to-run.
The safelinks service is good, but there will always be malicious links that get past it, and people need to be able to decide whether or not to click on a link by seeing the actual URL it would go to, not simply assume that safelinks will take care of it.
Has anyone else noticed this?
Using classic Outlook for Windows in business environments
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Consider yourself lucky! Still having the same issue here and I reported it to Microsoft premier support, but they still don't seem to care or have a clue. Still waiting on a solution.
I found that changing the default web browser from Chrome back to Edge fixed this. :(
It's interesting that other people are still reporting this problem, because in my case it went away some time ago (and I reported that on this topic at the time), both in desktop Outlook 365 and the 'new' Outlook.
Also interesting that the choice of default browser might have an effect. I don't have Edge as my default browser, and I also changed the setting in Outlook to tell it to use the default browser for web links in emails (its default setting is to use Edge). But the problem went away of its own accord and hasn't returned (yet!).
File > Options > Advanced > File and browser preferences:
I found that changing the default web browser from Chrome back to Edge fixed this. :(
I've also noticed this. I can't help wondering: what side they're on.
I'm assuming this is it. Settings >Mail>Compose and Reply>Link Preview
No, that automatically adds a preview of links in message you receive as well as those you send.
"When you open a message that contains a hyperlink or add a link to a message, Outlook inserts a preview of the website."
You really do not want to do this. It means Outlook will automatically access the URLs in messages you receive ... and as we have been discussing, any such URL could be to a malicious site.
Turn it off, if it was on.
For similar reasons, turn off auto-downloading of images in received messages. Among other things, they can contain trackers.