Legacy Outlook for Mac Bug: Original email content missing/blank when replying (Affects multiple systems)

Ansar Naduvathezhathu Nazar 20 Reputation points
2026-06-23T10:34:02.1966667+00:00

Hello,

I am experiencing a critical issue with Microsoft Outlook for Mac specifically while using the Legacy Outlook interface. When replying to or forwarding an existing email, the previous email content/history completely disappears and shows a blank space instead.

This is happening across multiple independent Mac systems in our environment, ruling out a localized machine corruption.

Here is what we have verified so far:

  • Interface behavior: The issue only occurs in Legacy Outlook. If we toggle the switch to the "New Outlook" interface, the reply history shows up perfectly. However, we strictly need to use Legacy Outlook for our workflow.
  • Settings checked: Under Outlook > Settings > Composing, "Include the original message" is checked and set to HTML.
  • Troubleshooting tried: We have unchecked "Only reply to selected text" to ensure it wasn't truncating the text. We have also entirely cleared the Outlook cache and preferences folder (~/Library/Containers/Microsoft Outlook/Data), but the bug persists.

Since this started suddenly on multiple machines, it appears to be a recent compatibility bug between a recent Outlook update and macOS.

Could a Microsoft agent please escalate this to the engineering team to review the Legacy rendering engine patch? Any advice on a temporary workaround (other than switching to New Outlook) would be appreciated.

System Details:

  • App: Microsoft Outlook for Mac (Legacy Mode)
  • Environment: Multiple Mac devices affected
Outlook | MacOS | Legacy Outlook for Mac | For business
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Answer accepted by question author
Jayden-P 26,280 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
2026-06-23T11:09:05.0833333+00:00

Hi @Ansar Naduvathezhathu Nazar

Thanks for reporting this issue. Microsoft is aware and actively investigating this behavior.

Replying to or forwarding an email does not include the original message in the email body in legac…

There are three workarounds you can try:

1/I have tested on previous version such as 16.109.3, and this behavior does not occur. Therefore, you may consider reverting to version 16.109.3 or older. This can be done by removing the current Outlook version and installing version 16.109.3 via Update history for Office for Mac - Office release notes | Microsoft Learn 

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After that, turn off automatic updates for Legacy Outlook for Mac by going to Help > Check for Updates > unchecking Automatically keep Microsoft apps up to date. 

2/Or witch to the Current Channel (Preview) and update Outlook to version 16.110.1 by going to Help > Check for Updates > Advanced > select Current Channel (Preview) > close the pane > click the update icon to display version 16.110.1, then install it > close Outlook, reopen it, and try again.

 User's image

3/On version 16.110, uncheck default html-format on both composing (preferences) tabs

The drawback would be the message is in plain text formatted (which means no images) but will be included.Screenshot 2026-06-17 at 11.08.40

Screenshot 2026-06-17 at 11.08.32I apologize for the inconvenience this might have cause to your workflow, please revert back to previous version as a temporary workaround.

I will keep you updated if there's a fix for this. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

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