Outlook Not Showing Embedded Images in Emails

Users often complain that Outlook doesn’t display (download) attached or linked images in the email body. Instead of images/photos, red X crosses are shown in the email. In this article, we will look at the basic Outlook settings that allow you to enable or disable displaying pictures in emails.

Enable Automatic Images Download in Outlook

By default, Outlook doesn’t automatically download embedded images in the e-mail body that refer to URLs on third-party sites. Instead of images, Outlook displays a red X and this warning:

Right-click here to download pictures. To help protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download of this picture from the Internet.

You can download pictures in an email one by one or all at once by clicking on the title in the email header.

Click here to download pictures. To help protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download of some pictures in this message.

Outlook automatically downloads pictures in e-mail messages from senders (domains) that you trust. You can add a sender to your trusted list by clicking the message status bar and selecting Add Sender (or Domain) to the Safe Sender List.

You can add a sender to the trusted list via Junk -> Junk E-mail Options -> Safe Senders -> Add.

Enter the sender’s email address, or use the format @woshub.com– if you want to trust all emails from this domain. Also, check the option “Also trust email from my Contacts”.

You can enable automatic downloading of pictures in Outlook (not secure!!!) File -> Options -> Trust Center -> Trust Center Settings -> uncheck “Don’t download pictures automatically in HTML e-mail messages or RSS items”.

Outlook also doesn’t show images when viewing plain text email messages. To turn off plain text view mode for email, go to File -> Options -> Trust Center -> Trust Center Settings -> E-mail Security and make sure that the “Read all standard mail in plain text” option is disabled.

Configure Internet Access Setting in Outlook

If Outlook cannot access an image file on an external resource, a red X with a warning appears in the e-mail instead of the linked image.

The linked image cannot be displayed. The file may have been moved, renamed or deleted. Verify that the link points to the correct file and location.

If an image in an e-mail references an HTTPS URL, check that your Windows security settings do not prevent images from being downloaded from HTTPS websites.

Open the Internet Properties Panel (run the inetcpl.cpl command), go to the Advanced tab, uncheck the Do not save encrypted files to disk option, and restart Outlook.

This setting can be disabled via the registry:

reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings" /v DisableCachingOfSSLPages /t reg_dword /d 00000000 /f

Or via the GPO option: User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Internet Explorer -> Internet Control Panel -> Advanced Page -> Do not save encrypted pages = Disabled.

Then check your Windows proxy settings (if you have incorrect proxy settings on your computer, Outlook won’t be able to download images from the Internet). If you are not using a proxy to access the Internet, check that the proxy server is disabled (Settings -> Network and Internet -> Proxy). The Use a proxy server option must be disabled.

Suppose you are connected to the Internet through a proxy server with Basic authentication (used quite rarely). In that case, Outlook cannot open HTTP links to images, because authentication is required to access them through a proxy. However, Outlook does not prompt for a password to authenticate a user on the proxy server.

In this case, go to the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common and create a REG_DWORD parameter with the name AllowImageProxyAuth and the value 2. This setting causes Outlook to prompt for a user credential for authentication (once per Outlook session).

You may also see a red X icon instead of the images if the BlockHTTPimages parameter in the reg key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\x.0\Common is set to 1. Remove this registry entry and restart Outlook.

Clear the Cache in Outlook

Outlook may not show images in e-mail messages if the Temporary Internet Files folder is full or damaged. In this case, the easiest way is to recreate the temporary folder.

Log on to the computer using a different account that has administrative privileges and delete the C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache directory of the problem user.

When you open any attachments, Outlook saves attachment files and images to a cache folder. Outlook may stop displaying pictures when the size of the cache directory exceeds a certain limit. In this case, you need to clean up the cache folder.

Get the path to the Outlook cache directory from the registry using the PowerShell command:

$OutlookTempFolder = (Get-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Security| select OutlookSecureTempFolder).OutlookSecureTempFolder

The path to the Outlook cache directory looks like this in my case: C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Outlook\xxxxx\. Open this directory, delete the contents (Get-ChildItem $OutlookTempFolder| Remove-Item -Recurse -Force), and then restart Outlook.