How to create Outlook email links in plain text?

September 29, 2010 8:45 AM

How can I get Outlook to create a text link to an email instead of a graphical icon link when drag-and-dropping into another MS app?

In Outlook (2010, specifically), you can drag an email from your Inbox to another MS Office application (Word, OneNote, etc) and create a link back to the email in your inbox. The problem is, it makes the link as a big goofy envelope icon that takes up all sorts of space and ruins formatting. Old versions of Outlook (2003, at least) would instead create a text link that would easily fit inline with the rest of your document. I want this functionality back.

Any ideas?

Thanks

posted by sprocket87 to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: I do not know that this is the for-sure correct answer, but I suspect it is. It looks like Outlook 2007 doesn't register the outlook:// protocol, but it can be registered via a registry patch. And there's also, on the same site, a free application called Outlook Linker. Again, this is not something I'm sure of, but I suspect this is the path down which your answer lies.
posted by Fizzgig at 5:54 PM on September 29, 2010

Well, I played around with this in Word for a few minutes, and figured out a way, but it's not pretty.

Right-click on the envelope icon (in Word) and choose "Packager Shell Object Object", and then choose "Rename Package."

Select all the text in the filename box. Click Cancel.

Click the Insert tab, and choose Hyperlink.

Paste the text you just copied into the address box. In the text To Display box, put the text you want the link to read. Click OK.

Like I said, not pretty. Maybe you could record a macro for it.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 8:01 AM on September 30, 2010

You know, I just read this over and realized I forgot a crucial step:

Select all the text in the filename box.

COPY (Ctrl+C or right-click and copy)

Click Cancel.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:10 PM on September 30, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks for the tips guys, I'll give em a whirl and report back...
posted by sprocket87 at 5:20 AM on October 1, 2010

Response by poster: Update: Got it working using Fizzig's tips - thanks so much!

FYI I had to do a bit of tweaking as those tools were designed for Office 2007 and prior. The registry file tweaks in Frizzig's first link point to the "Office12" folder under Program Files; this is for 2007 - for 2010 you have to use Office14. Once I changed the 2 registry keys to Office14 the outlook: URL link worked from MS Word & OneNote.

That gets you halfway there but you still need to know what item to link to, which is where the Linker program Fizzig linked to comes in. It adds a systray icon that you right-click on to generate a hyperlink to the selected item in Outlook. Once I fixed the URL option in the registry this worked like a charm!


Thanks so much again, I really appreciate the help!
posted by sprocket87 at 6:43 AM on October 1, 2010