Outlook – How to prevent a URL in an email I send from being auto-linked by the recipient’s email client

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When I type a URL into an email in Outlook, it automatically converts it to a hyperlink. I can, of course, remove the hyperlink from the context menu:

Outlook context menu screenshot

But, then when the email is received and when I view it in my Sent Items folder, the urls are again converted to hyperlinks. How can I prevent this? Embedded images are no good because the URL must be copy and pasteable (among numerous other reasons that this approach is not great). And it must retain the formatting applied when I send it.

This answer on stackoverflow shows a good trick for preventing auto linked urls when sending an email programmatically, but I'm looking for a way to do this from the UI. Perhaps there a way to edit the HTML of the message before it is sent?

If not, I guess I'm off to write an Outlook Add-in.

Best Answer

You can edit the HTML of the link before you send it. Just click the Edit Hyperlink... showed in your image there and then add the <z></z> tag within the hyperlink, as outlined in the SO answer you showed.

Edit Hyperlinks

This has the advantage of showing up like a link, but attempting to click it does nothing. However, you are not prevented from selecting it to copy/paste.

Dummy link

The z isn't necessary; any invalid HTML tag will do. You could replace the whole link with something invalid, but then it would still try to open it in a browser. For some reason, having the invalid tag in the middle prevents it from even trying to open it even though it still knows it's a hyperlink.

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