Is there a way to make 365 safelinks not show the full unreadable link?

Question

Safelinks in Outlook 365 are horrendous. Is there a reason why they put the full link into the text body?

I mean, is there a reason they aren't like this:

<html>
    <head />
    <body>
        <a href="https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/">https://www.originallink.com/</a>
    </body>
</html>

so you can parse the original link whilst still being 'protected'? Is there a option to display them like this, rather than just turning off Safelinks altogether?

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 23 '23 at 11:19

You can develop VBA macro or COM add-in where you could replace hyperlinks with your own format. For that you need to handle the NewMailEx event of the Outlook Application class which is fired for every received item that is processed by Microsoft Outlook. The item can be one of several different item types, for example, MailItem, MeetingItem, or SharingItem. The EntryIDsCollection string contains the Entry ID that corresponds to that item.

The NewMailEx event fires when a new message arrives in the Inbox and before client rule processing occurs. Use the Entry ID returned in the EntryIDCollection string to call the NameSpace.GetItemFromID method and process the item.

In the event handle you have access to the HTMLBody property where you can find all hyperlinks and do the required replacements.

Is there a way to make 365 safelinks not show the full unreadable link?

1 Answers1