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If your Hotmail.com or Outlook.com inbox is giving issues with images not showing or loading in emails and email newsletters, follow this temporary fix. The fix involves changing messages from being shown individually to being shown in group or threads.
1) Look at the top right of the screen
2)Click on the Gear icon to access Settings
3) Click on “View All Outlook Settings”
4) Look at the left side of the pop-up window and click on “Mail”, under “General”
5) Make sure you’re on the “Layout” heading
6) Scroll Down to Message Organization
7) Click “Show Email Grouped By Conversation”
Now your images will show, but the emails will be in a grouped message view, not individual message view. Use this fix until Microsoft fixes the issue permanently.
Microsoft’s Recommendation
Microsoft recommends enabling “Always use the Outlook service to load images” under the External Images section in the Settings on hotmail.com or outlook.com
If You Can’t Stand Grouped / Threaded Emails
Another option is to hit the reply button or the forward button on the email, and the images will load. When you are done with the email, just delete it or discard it. This is an annoying workaround, but it’s another option if you don’t want to turn on grouped emails.
Good luck!
You’re right, it looks fixed on my end too. Thanks for the update. Good point, I know, I deleted a bunch of newsletters and email offers because I couldn’t see at a glance if anything was worth clicking on.
As someone on twitter reported it seems to be fixed now. I switched threading back to individual and seems to be staying fixed.
I guess we will never know… even though the issue possibly was noticed I’m guessing by thousands of users over as long as a week. I also wonder what this did to email marketing metrics that couldn’t record opens due non loading images.
Hi @AChanceFind, when I inspected the HTML code for the broken images before setting it to grouped, the img tag showed:
img data-imagetype=”External” blockedimagesrc=”http://www.gstatic.com/youtube/img/branding/youtubelogo/1x/youtubelogo_60.png” alt=”Youtube Logo”.
So even the source code labels the image as “blockimagesrc”, looks like it’s happening server-side and may be related the Outlook’s option to use Outlook to load external images. However, when I disabled the option to use Outlook to load external images, it still didn’t work when I set it back to individual emails. It’s a mystery.
Looks like the broken images came back then I changed back to grouped threads and it is working again. You are right it needs to stay set to grouped in order to stay fixed, setting it back looks like it’s all still working then something kicks in a while later and it’s back to broken.
I am on the outlook “app” installed via Edge and on outlook.com directly in the Edge browser.
It’s never been an issue using the android outlook app.
I would never think that a threading setting would effect loading of html images. The theory I had in my head was they turned it off due to some exploit as it started for me about a week ago after I noticed a crazy flood of spam in the junk folder. Searching online revealed mostly noise then finally found this thread via twitter which also only had a handful of chatter about it. I imagine this affects many thousands of users and is pretty significant feature (seeing images, a thing since the 90s) so not having it out there as “hey we’re aware and working on it’ for all to see is just baffling to me.
I applied the thread setting change and it caused the inbox to reprocess for a while then when it recovered the images issue was fixed. I then put the setting back the way it was to “individual” and the images issue is still fixed for me and it even is working again on a different computer. I imagine I won’t be able to tell when the actual real fix is put out or it may break again and I also imagine many others out there are going crazy trying to figure it out. Why can’t we find any public posting from Microsoft/Outlook about this known issue that is being worked on? They rather get thousands of support tickets?
Thank you for putting this workaround/fix out there and from what I can tell doing what a multi-billion dollar corporation could not do!
Hi there, I’m glad the fix worked for you. Are you using the Outlook email client, or Outlook.com via a web browser? I agree, Microsoft should just email all affected users instead of having us waste time playing around with settings when nothing is wrong on our end.
Thanks for this answer, not what i expected but from the other answers you’ve given I can see you’ve reported the bug and that they’re working on it so thanks for publishing this
You’re welcome. Yes, I think a few people have reported the issue before me because they replied that they know about it already. My issues started about 6 days ago, but I am hearing that other people are reporting their issues starting as early as a couple of days ago.
Holy cow! I type in a question and voila, here is the exact answer I was searching for online. I actually changed that group email setting a few days ago but it did not click in (pun intended) that I eliminated my photos. Thank you so much.
You are amazing.
Glad it helped Lise! We should be able to have our emails set to Individual, but for now we have to leave it as Grouped until Microsoft fixes the issue. They said they are aware of the issue when I created a support ticket with them.
Oh my gosh! Thank you SO much for this post! I thought I was the only one going crazy about not being able to see the pictures in my emails. By the way, how were you able to get a hold of support? I looked and looked every where, and I could not find anyone to help.
Hi Yvette, you’re welcome!
I was able to get support be clicking on the “?” icon at the top right of my Hotmail inbox. Once I clicked that, I typed in my issue and searched. Nothing came up in the search results matching my issue and it asked if my issue was solved, I said “No”, and I was able to submit my issue directly from there. Microsoft replied back to me within 24 hours and said that they know about the issue and are working on it.
Any explanation for why this just suddenly happened (to me, anyway) today? Everything was fine yesterday.
I also created a support ticket with Microsoft but have received no reply.
Hi Brandie, sorry I do not have an answer. My issue appeared around 5 to 6 days ago, but others have mentioned that their issue occurred as early as a day ago. It’s something that Microsoft has to fix on their end for us permanently. I received a reply within 24 hours of creating my support ticket. If they are getting overwhelmed with support tickets, there may be a delay until you get a reply.
Wow! That worked! Annoying to have messages grouped, but not as annoying as not having any images. Thank you!
Yep, hopefully we just have to endure grouped messages temporarily until Microsoft can permanently fix this.
Wow. I created a support ticket with Microsoft from Hotmail.com and they said they know of the issue and they are working on it. Didn’t know the issue has been around for so long though.
MS team has been working on this particular issue since 2014, maybe longer. Nothing but problems from them since Bhatia sold Hotmail to them. I have no hopes for any kind of solution in the near or even remote future.
Thank you very much! Your suggestion worked like magic 😀
I’m happy to hear it!
Thank you so much! This has been driving me crazy the last few days and I couldn’t figure out what had changed.
I’m glad it helped! This is only a temporary fix though because now your emails are grouped, which I hate. I created a support ticket with Microsoft, and they said they are aware of the issue and working on a fix.