Why does Outlook no longer show the original URL on hovering over a link in an email message?

Interesting... MS can't seem to get their story straight. The response I received from MS Support last night was:

Hello, Thank you for contacting Outlook InApp Support. My name is Saikiran, and I'll be happy to assist. I have taken ownership of this ticket. As per the issue description I understand that you can't hover over links is no longer showing the tooltip destination URL on new Outlook. I am writing to inform you that we have investigated further on the issue you reported with our product. We have identified this to be a known issue that affects some of our customers. We are working hard to resolve this issue as soon as possible and Our apologies for the inconvenience this have caused to your productivity. We appreciate your patience and understanding while we fix this problem. We will notify you once we have a solution available for you. If any of those limitations are critical for your work, we recommend you stay in the Classic Outlook until they are resolved, or you can switch the toggle to go between apps as often as you want. You may switch the toggle "New Outlook" off (top-right), to revert to Classic Outlook. Since there is no further troubleshooting pending from our end, do I have your permission to archive this ticket for now? Hoping for your kind understanding and cooperation in this scenario. Regards, Saikiran

I received the same anwer today.

Interesting indeed how we got different responses! Let's hope your two are in fact what's happening, in that they acknowledge that it's an issue that they're trying to sort. Thanks for submitting and letting us know.

In addition to this, I have another symptom of the poor QC checks on realease, related to links in email:

For some months now I've had another issue with links in Outlook (new).

That, whenever I open emails from Indeed or LinkedIn, I get 2 tabs opening in my browser. Every single time.

Only happens on this "new" version of Outook app.

Not when I switch it back to the "classic".

Never happens in my Office 365 desktop version of Outlook, from the same emails.

Happens in any web browser I set as "default". ( mention this because an old thread suggests this is the root cause).

Only seems to affect LinkedIn and Indeed email alerts (I haven't looked for other platform/email alerts to expand on this sample).

Opened a thread about it today because I'm bored with having to close 1 of 2 tabs for every time I click a link in these emails.

Dev team really need to be performing real-world testing as these important/irritating issues keep getting published to live software.

AS for this OP's thread (I've responded to this before) - I too am now noticing that sometimes Outlook (New) does show links on hover, and other times it doesn't.... a few days ago I saw that they were showing again.... hover over links, popup shows the real link in full...

Today > Nope. Not working again. I feel like the App is gaslighting us lol.

I already disabled their smartscreen functionality because it is useless right now > AND..... I get nothing on hover, so NO idea what I would be clicking on at all.

But, in "Outlook 365" - same/all emails > I see the full URL upon hover... without this nonsense feature enabled anywhere...

Fingers crossed that they "Soon TM" patch out the "lets hide links to bambooze customers and reduce security" iteration in current circulation.

Interesting indeed how we got different responses! Let's hope your two are in fact what's happening, in that they acknowledge that it's an issue that they're trying to sort. Thanks for submitting and letting us know.

The response you got sounds rather like it came from an AI, and the response to @SMiller_920 seems more like a real person wrote it. Fingers crossed MS really are investigating the problem.

It does seem true that "some" people are experiencing the problem. My own experience of it made me open this thread, but the problem came and went for me, and hasn't been back (yet).

Others are obviously still seeing it, though, even in the latest versions of Outlook and New Outlook, so the underlying cause hasn't been fixed yet.

New Outlook isn't anywhere near ready to be rolled out. Quite apart from the link display issue, which is a real show-stopper for those experiencing it (and to admins and support staff!), it's still missing far too many of "classic" Outlook's important functions, in my opinion. For example, being able even to read PST files isn't planned until some time next year, according to the MS 365 timeline.