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Pictures Don't Display in Outlook Messages

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› Problems › Pictures Don’t Display in Outlook Messages

Last reviewed on December 22, 2020     328 Comments

Applies to: Outlook 2016 (Win), Outlook 2013, Outlook 2010, Outlook 2007

There are four causes of pictures not displaying in Microsoft Outlook email messages:

  • Internet Options setting for saving encrypted pages to disk (below)
  • Blocking external content
  • Red X's in Email / SecureTemp folder is "full"
  • Word's Picture placeholder setting enabled (below)

 

Internet Options Encrypted Page Setting

Note: Outlook uses Internet Options settings, not Edge settings.

Open Internet Options, either by typing Internet Options on the start menu or opening it from the Control panel.

Look under the Security section for Do not save encrypted files to disk. Untick this setting and Apply. Restart Outlook and you should be fixed. (If you don't use Internet Explorer, you can go to Control panel, Internet Options or just type Internet Options in the Start menu Search.)
Save encrypted files setting
Thanks to William for sharing this with us.

 

Check the Picture Placeholder setting

If you do not see a red x but have a blank box shaped/sized like the graphic or photo, you have Show picture placeholders enabled. (A great feature if your Internet connection is slow.)
showing picture placeholders

Note that this dialog is accessible from a COMPOSE MESSAGE window, not the main Outlook window!

Outlook 2010, 2013, 2016

These steps work for Outlook 2010, Outlook 2013, and Outlook 2016 (including Outlook which is included in Office 365 subscriptions).

  1. Click the New Email button or press Ctrl+N while viewing the Inbox.
  2. Go to the new message's File, Options dialog.
  3. Click Mail, then Editor Options
  4. Select Advanced and look near the bottom of the dialog for the option to Show Picture Placeholders.
    check the picture placeholder setting
  5. Uncheck the box to Show picture placeholders
  6. Close the dialog then close the message.

After changing the settings, close the message. Do not sent it! This, like many other message settings (zoom, etc), will apply only to the current message if you send it. You need to close the message to change the global setting.

In Outlook 2007

  1. While in a New message window
  2. Click the Office icon
  3. Click the Editor options button on the lower right of the dialog
  4. Select Advanced from the left menu of the Editor options dialog
  5. Scroll down to Display email contents section (near the bottom)
  6. Uncheck the box to Show picture placeholders
  7. Then click OK to apply and close the dialog.
  8. Close the message.

In older versions, this is an Internet Options setting, accessible from either IE's Tools menu or Control Panel. In the Internet Options dialog, go to the Advanced tab. The Show pictures option is in the Multimedia group, about halfway down.

Pictures Don't Display in Outlook Messages was last modified: December 22nd, 2020 by Diane Poremsky
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Related Posts:

  • Outlook: Web Bugs & Blocked HTML Images
  • Red X's in Email Messages
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  • To Leave Internet Messages on the Server

About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

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Joe (@guest_219153)
February 5, 2022 8:14 pm
#219153

I've been struggling with this issue for quite some time and none of the standard solutions (including making changes to the registry) worked. What I found was that there was a file called WebCacheV01.dat that was corrupted. I deleted it and everything worked again. The way I discovered this was by looking at my Event Viewer under applications, I found an error saying:
DllHost (13700,R,98) WebCacheLocal: An attempt to open the compressed file "C:\Users\xxxxuserxxxx\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WebCache\WebCacheV01.dat" for read / write access failed because it could not be converted to a normal file. The open file operation will fail with error -4005 (0xfffff05b). To prevent this error in the future you can manually decompress the file and change the compression state of the containing folder to uncompressed. Writing to this file when it is compressed is not supported.

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Lori (@guest_218733)
September 19, 2021 8:39 am
#218733

Hi Diane - this is happening on my personal computer, not my work computer. I don't have that same ribbon on the top where the word "file" is so I can't follow these instructions. Where do I go? Thanks.

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Nasir Uddin (@guest_218487)
June 30, 2021 6:25 am
#218487

Good solution Thank you so much for valuable guideline

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Eric McCallum (@guest_218433)
June 20, 2021 10:28 pm
#218433

Hi Diane,
I just wanted to say thank you. I had searched the internet for hours trying to find a solution to my Outlook 2016 no image display in email problem and your steps were easy to follow with great explanations and very intuitive. Problem fixed after following your steps above.

Thank you

Eric McCallum

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Robert (@guest_217278)
December 9, 2020 11:07 am
#217278

Hi,

I have a user who receives QR codes and the QR codes will appear in some emails and some are just images with "X" in there. All QR codes appear fine in OWA.

I am using M365 Apps for Enterprise v. 2010 build 13328.20356 and am not seeing this option in the Mail > Advanced location. All I see is "Display" and the option to check this is not there. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Mike (@guest_215816)
August 29, 2020 11:02 am
#215816

"Check the Picture Placeholder setting" worked fine - after weeks of trying to reset IE and other dead ends posted in other blogs. THANKS!!!

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RaDas (@guest_215477)
June 24, 2020 10:13 am
#215477

worx, thanks !

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Reply
Edgar Mujica (@guest_215233)
May 18, 2020 10:39 pm
#215233

Excellent, very well and detailed explanation. Thanks

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