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Outlook for Mac (Legacy UI): HTML Reply/Forward Body Missing

Myron Cramer 0 Reputation points
2026-06-19T03:46:08.6666667+00:00
  1. Summary

When replying to or forwarding HTML formatted emails in Legacy Outlook for Mac, the entire original message body is missing. Only headers (or nothing at all) appear in the composition window.

This issue does not occur with plain text messages, and it occurs across all account types (Exchange on prem, Exchange Online, Gmail, iCloud).

This is a client side HTML rendering regression in Legacy Outlook for Mac.

  1. Affected Product

• Outlook for Mac — Legacy UI

• Version range: 16.70+ through 16.113 (confirmed)

• macOS Ventura → Sonoma → Sequoia

  1. Steps to Reproduce (Minimal Repro Case)
  2. Receive any HTML email (from any server).
  3. Click Reply or Forward.
  4. Observe the composition window.
  5. Expected Behavior

The reply or forward should include:

• The full HTML body of the original message

• Quoted formatting

• Inline history

  1. Actual Behavior

• No original message content appears

• Only headers or nothing at all

• Cursor appears at top of a blank message

• Switching to plain text does not restore the missing HTML body

  1. Scope Verification

Works correctly (NOT affected):

• Plain text messages

• All servers:

o Exchange 2016

o Exchange Online

o Gmail

o iCloud

• OWA (though it has CR/LF spacing issues on macOS)

• New Outlook for Mac (but does not support on prem Exchange)

Fails consistently (affected):

• HTML messages

• Reply

• Forward

• Inline reply

• Pop out reply

• All accounts configured in Legacy Outlook

This confirms the bug is format specific, not server specific.

  1. Technical Analysis (User Provided)

The failure is isolated to the HTML composition pipeline in Legacy Outlook:

• Plain text editor path works

• HTML editor path fails to load the original body into the composition buffer

• The HTML sanitization/quoting wrapper appears to drop the entire DOM

• The issue is deterministic and reproducible

This strongly suggests a regression in:

• HTML body extraction

• HTML body injection

• HTML sanitization

• HTML → editor conversion

• Quoting wrapper (blockquote/div)

This is a single code path failure, not a multi layer interaction.

  1. Severity

High reply/forward quoting is a core email function. Users cannot respond to HTML messages without manually copying/pasting the original content.

  1. Workarounds

• Manually copy/paste the original message body

• Use Apple Mail (EWS)

• Use OWA (but introduces CR/LF double spacing on macOS)

• New Outlook not viable for on prem Exchange

Outlook | MacOS | Legacy Outlook for Mac | For business
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Answer accepted by question author

Michelle-N 17,775 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
2026-06-19T04:35:08.97+00:00

Hi @Myron Cramer

Based on the highly detailed technical breakdown you provided, I completely understand the issue you are facing. You have identified a critical client-side HTML rendering regression specific to the Legacy Outlook for Mac UI (affecting versions 16.70+ through 16.113) across multiple macOS versions (Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia).

In my testing environment with Legacy Outlook for Mac version 16.109.3, the content of the original email is still retained when replying. 

User's image

With that in mind, may I kindly confirm which version of Legacy Outlook for Mac you are currently using? You can check this by going to Outlook > About Outlook. 

If your version is higher than 16.109.3, you may consider reverting to version 16.109.3. This can be done by removing the current Outlook version and installing version 16.109.3 using the updater.pkg available from the Update history for Office for Mac - Office release notes | Microsoft Learn 

User's image

After that, you may turn off automatic updates for Legacy Outlook for Mac by going to Help > Check for Updates > unchecking Automatically keep Microsoft apps up to date.  As an alternative, you may also try the New Outlook for Mac, where this behavior does not occur. 

I hope this provides some helpful direction. 

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment". 

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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  1. Myron Cramer 0 Reputation points
    2026-06-19T10:19:48.65+00:00

    Michelle,

    I am running Version 16.110 (26061317), which was automatically installed on June 16 as part of my Microsoft 365 Subscription. Should I revert all of the Office Suite or only the Outlook App?Thank you.

                  Myron

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