Hey All,

I just recently started a Network/Systems Admin job at a new company. I have been trying to figure this out since i started, but i cant figure out what is going on.

I am very used to, and pretty much need, to have my outlook require the CTRL Click turned on when clicking on hyperlinks in emails. Currently it is just opening links as soon as i click on them and that is causing me some issues. I know i could train myself to work around this, but after years of doing one thing it is just a habit.

I have looked at a bunch of the “Help me turn it off” style articles so i could reverse engineer it, and they all point to the same option under Options > Mail > Editor Options > Advanced > “Use CTRL Click to follow hyperlinks”. This is enabled in my outlook, but it still just has the “click or tap” functionality.

I have tested on both my Domain Desktop and Domain laptop and they both do the same thing. We are using Outlook 2019 Pro Plus and server 2019 DC’s if that makes a difference.

Does anyone have any ideas as to maybe a group policy object or something else that might be forcing this to work in one way? I have not been able to find out what is going on.

In Microsoft Word, it does work the way i want where it requires you to hit CTRL and click on hyperlinks.

Thanks for anyone’s help. My KnowBe4 administrator will thank you if you can help me get this figured out

THIS FIXED ITSELF, NOT SURE HOW, EVERYTHING I TRIED THAT HAD BEEN SUGGESTED DID NOT WORK. I EVEN ASKED OUTLOOK SUPPORT TO HELP & WHAT THEY SAID DID NOTHING. GOOD LUCK TO ALL & I HOPE YOU FIGURE THIS OUT BECAUSE I SURE COULDN'T.

I am having issues now with links not opening in Outlook. This occurred in a recent update that Microsoft did.

I am not going to remove & reinstall Outlook as I have 100's of thousands of emails, folders set up, etc. It would take me weeks to get this all redone.

So, why when updates occur, they can't leave things alone!

I know this is from an update because the last one my computer did was on 8/11/24 & that's when it stopped working.

Nothing on the internet or in any responses does it show how to fix this. I've already ensured that Default Browser is clicked.

Please help as I have dozens of links that I need to open & they will not work

After lots of searching, I found something that mostly works, though it's not as seamless as what I was searching for.

I set up the following Automator workflow. First I set the workflow to receive no input in any application. The first action is "Get Contents of Clipboard". The second action in the workflow is "Run Shell Script", using /bin/bash as the shell and passing input as arguments with the following body (most of which was automatically populated):

for f in "$@"; do
  open -a /Applications/Safari.app "$f"
done

I named my service "Open in Safari". Save.

Then I set up a global shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services > General > Open in Safari, click on (none) and add my shortcut which I set to Ctrl+Shift+S, though it could be anything. I'm not sure if that key combination will clash with something else or not.

So now I can just right-click on a link in Outlook, select Copy Link, then hit my key combination to open the link in Safari. The only other side effect is that the link also gets opened in Firefox which is set as the default browser. I'd be interested to find out how to stop this behavior.

Well, I just figured it out.

The 2 problem hyperlinks were vendor business names that use "sensational spelling" and were flagged as misspelled words. Clicking "add to dictionary" on both names did the trick and now the hand icon now appears for them.

Sensational spelling is when a brand intentionally misspells their name - like Lyft, Tumblr, Krispy Kreme, Crumbl.

I'm not sure why Microsoft Word has it set up that way - especially when so many vendors today use sensational spelling. Why is the hand icon disabled for words not found in the dictionary, but the CTRL + Click still works? It makes no sense to me.