Monday, January 19, 2009

Can't View Images in Outlook Email Messages

image A few days ago, a colleague of mine mentioned that he could not see any images sent to him in Outlook e-mail messages.  His e-mails simply displayed a red-X where the image should have been.  I did a quick Google search and found hundreds of possibilities that could have caused this.  Luckily, one search result stood out to me as a possible solution.  The accurate solution to my colleagues woes was posted on itqueries.com.  This fixed the problem of images not being displayed in Outlook e-mail messages.

Here is the solution;

  1. Close Outlook
  2. Load Regedit.  Start | Run | Regedit
  3. Navigate to the following registry key;
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\
      Security\OutlookSecureTempFolder
  4. Delete the path specified in the OutlookSecureTempFolder key
  5. Restart Outlook

Upon the restart of Outlook, the registry key entry was automatically recreated, and my colleague was able to view images in e-emails.

My theory is that the previous OutlookSecureTempFolder was corrupt or invalid.  By deleting the path to this directory, Outlook recreated a new temp directory and all was well.

If you ever experience the same type of problem, I hope this same tip works for you!

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much this has been bugging me for weeks. i can now view images again!!

Anonymous said...

Excellent.

Definitely works for me. And know it shows the image properly.

Thanks a lot :D

Anonymous said...

This trick worked for me too! The only difference was that my Microsoft folder was under "Software." Thanks so much for posting!

Anonymous said...

Tim, you are the man. Worked for me. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

This fix worked great for me to! Thanks!!

Anonymous said...

I was really scared to hit the delete button on the temp folder but it worked, thank goodness! You just saved me months of waiting for a helpdesk ticket to get resolved! I am so grateful!

Anonymous said...

THIS WORKED PERFECT!!!!

MY USER IS NOW THINKS IM THE SHIT!

THANKS!

Anonymous said...

Do I delete the actual entry in regedit or the actual folder it is pointing to? I can't locate that actual folder via windows explorer (even with hidden folders shown).

Anonymous said...

This worked like a charm and I'm glad I didn't have to go through 1 million search results. The only thing is the path is alittle off. It reads: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\
Security\OutlookSecureTempFolder
After "HKEY_CURRENT_USER" should be "Software". Anyone who knows what their doing would know where to go, but the novice probably wouldn't! Thanks So Much!!!

Tim Kwiatkowski said...

Yes, delete the key in the registry.

Good call out on the registry path error! I will update this post. Thanks.

AndrewL said...

You're a legend!!
Thanx very much for your help.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot, looking for solution to this problem for ages!!!!

Anonymous said...

Great fix. I too was nervous about deleting the path at first but took the plunge. Thanks for the info.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately this hasn't worked for me. I had a slightly different path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Security\

Any ideas as to how i can sort this problem. I've had it for the past month or so, but everything was working fine before. Thanks in anticipation...

El Fardacho Andarín said...

Thanks a lot! I was worried that your solution didn't work in my case, since I don't even see the red crosses on my mails. But it did.
Thank you again.

Toronto Fred said...

Thanks very much! Yep, worked!

Karl Pilz said...

wow, thank you so much!!! It worked for me running Windows 7 and Outlook 2007. I just had to go to ...\Office\12.0\Outlook\...

Edvin said...

Your a lifesaver, thanks a lot!

Unknown said...

Finally! This worked ... NOTE: I had to restart the computer for this to work, not just outlook.

Anonymous said...

I just want to say I had a problem for days and googled and this helped totally!! thanks for the advice.

Unknown said...

mimic everyone else - this was one of those really annoying bugs - that was just not quite annoying to dig into - your tip did the job.

Thanks a lot.

Anonymous said...

thanks so much. I have called a lot of our IT support and no one can seem to find a solution for my problem and I was already desperate until I chanched upon your site. And it worked! Thank you!

bluesky said...

Thank you!!!

It works greatly

Anonymous said...

Perfect!

Anonymous said...

I am sorry to say this didn't work for me. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I have Office 2007 and use Outlook for my emails. I use Mozilla Firefox as my browser, until two days ago I had no toruble seeing the pictures in my emails. Now I am able to see some but most I can't see at all. If I click on the red square I still can't see the pictures. As far as I know, nothing has changed on my computer, I haven't changed any settings done anything I am aware of.

Teresa Jane said...

thanks so much for the tip. It just started out of the blue today. Your solution fixed the problem. I took a chance and chose 12 instead of 11 since the security folder wasnt' in that one and it worked. Whew! Thanks again

Ruben said...

all i did was reset my firewall settings back to defaults then all email red x pictures were replaced with the actual images

Anonymous said...

This solution worked for me. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, but I'll simply continue using my Mac in order to avoid stuff like this. When crap like this happens at work, I'll just whine some more to the IT department and have them come over and add "validity" to their jobs. After all, if the OS wasn't so fragile, the "don't auto-display images" function would be irrelevant.

/rant

Anonymous said...

Thank You SO SO Much!

Anonymous said...

Great stuff. First link I clicked on and it worked perfectly.

Anonymous said...

worked for me. Thx!

MiniSoft said...

And For Office 14 (A.K.A 2010) ?, there is no Security in Outlook(from Office\14)

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