"View in Browser" takes me to MS Word, NOT a browser

A message from an internet vendor is displaying a message in MS Office Outlook without images. When I click on "view in browser" this instantly opens up MS Word, not a browser, and the document displays with the same (image) omissions. Why and how can I (or they) fix this?

Hi there, LimeyDi. Welcome to TenForums.

You may want to check out your app defaults. Hold Windows key then press I > Choose Apps > Choose Default apps > Either choose "Rest to MS recommended defaults" or go through all the categories for changing defaults as you like them.

Choose Default Apps in Windows 10 Windows 10 Apps Features Tutorials

Also in Outlook, you can right click on a picture placeholder in an email and choose to download pics. It's a safety feature that it doesn't download pics. You can also place that sender on your "Safe Sender" list so that it will always download the whole email.

Hope that helps you.

Thanks for the advice, I did not post until after attempting the obvious fixes you describe. Specifically which default setting(s) do you think should affect this glitch? I will not reset to the defaults because I have carefully selected my defaults, but if a default setting is causing this bizarre problem I want to correct it - thanks again.

You're welcome, LimeyDi.

Hold Windows key then press I > Choose Apps > Choose Default apps > Set your favorite web browser as the default, which should force it to open your email links. (I use dark theme. That's why the page is black in case you're wondering)


Attachment 145571

If that still doesn’t work, From the Default apps page from above choose "Choose default apps by protocol" > Scroll down to “”URL:HyperText Transfer Protocol” and set to your web browser of choice. Repeat for file types “HyperText Transfer Protocol with Privacy” and FTP. (Can't see the end of that last one, but it's there.)


Attachment 145570

LimeyDi said:

A message from an internet vendor is displaying a message in MS Office Outlook without images. When I click on "view in browser" this instantly opens up MS Word, not a browser, and the document displays with the same (image) omissions. Why and how can I (or they) fix this?

Setting the default for Html/Hmt file association, as more than too often is recommended by a lot of Internet Gurus, does not address this issue.

My issue started because Outlook, 2013 is my version, when you want to print only a selection of an email, the "print selection" radio button is greyed out (i.e. disabled). I looked for a feature to let me do this. BTW, this was available in Outlook 2003, so some programmer decided "No, we are not going to let you do that". I accept that you can't let only a portion of an "email" be printed and still make it look like an email from the same sender.

Not what I want anyway. But if I want to print, for example, only the "transaction number" and "amount paid" from an email receipt from PayPal (no criticism of PayPal), I really don't want to print all the pages, including all the heavily colored boxes. And similarly with other popular eReceipts now offered by many other service companies. To me it is just another way to push ads in my face. I don't want them to waste my paper and/or my ink or toner.

OK, I found a way, I thought, to do this in Outlook 2013. I added "View in Browser" to the Ribbon (per other instructions on the Internet), clicked it with a message open, and it opened in Word. First problem, it would still not let me print a selection, because it open in protected mode. Second problem, Word wants to be smart, and includes the page header on each page, and that means extra heavily colored boxes. There may be ways to adjust this, but I am not interested to "edit" the page, just simply print what I want to see on a piece of paper.

Anyway Outlook did not open a browser. I checked the default settings for Html/Hmt file association. They were set to the Edge. After a lot of thinking I realized that this must be an "Outlook" setting. Sure enough, opening the "app" Outlook (everything is now called an app, even if it is the full blown software version), the Hmt setting was "Word". That's the one you want to change, but only Hmt, not Html.

Also not to the Edge, because the Edge doesn't do Hmt files (see elsewhere; you get a simply text string; relatively useless), unless there is a setting for this somewhere.

For the Outlook app change the Hmt setting to IE. Bingo, the message then opened in IE. And yes, IE does do Hmt files.

At first the system will keep trying to steer you to the Edge. But resist the click bait. That's all they are at this point.

You will need to go through the original IE setups, but finally the message opens in IE. Most important for me is that IE uses the old Print Preview screen, which allows you to pick "as selection", and as a bonus you can apply a scale if the font is too small.

Bingo, and Bingo. I have the features I looked for. How long they will lasts for me I don't know, because MS keeps saying that the end of IE is in sight. Until then I will be "green" and save paper and ink or toner.

kdsdata said:

...I really don't want to print all the pages, including all the heavily colored boxes.....

What I do in Outlook 2010 is edit the email and convert to plain text, then strip out the chaff. I don't print, but like to save just the important details in the email.

mngerhold said:

What I do in Outlook 2010 is edit the email and convert to plain text, then strip out the chaff. I don't print, but like to save just the important details in the email.

Hi, that's how I started. But as old (really old) programmer I could not settle for what could be considered a) time-consuming, b) user-unfriendly way, to do something. So I looked for a better way. But please read my reply to Try3.

- - - Updated - - -

Try3 said:

You don't mention where you found the 'other instructions on the Internet' that you used.

I can use the options available in MSOffice Outlook 2021 to View in browser and it does indeed open in IE as an mht file. It's then perfectly happy for me to print only the selection.

I do not need to try any of the messing about that you are being forced into. It just works.

The procedure does not work, for the examples I've tried, in MSOffice Outlook 2007 even though the option does exist in this version.
Your MSOffice Outlook 2013 sits somewhere in the middle.

I would expect View in browser to be an option available to you within Outlook's menu system so I suggest you open an email then hunt around for that option directly [rather than use whatever you have put in your ribbon] to see how it behaves.


Best of luck,
Denis

Hi. First, you are correct. On a first use, if you do the correct clicks you don't get into the mess I got into. Second, you made me realize that I had forgotten to mention something in my posting. That something is what got me into a situation where I had to find the solution to Outlook opening the "View in Browser" in Word, and my need to be able to print only a selection out of a message.

When I "first" used (clicked) the button that I had just placed on the Ribbon, the choices where to pick what app to use, AND the "Don't ask again" checkbox. I had thought Word would be good choice, and also had clicked "Don't ask again". And that's how "I" got down the rabbit hole.

My apologies for leaving out this very important fact.

In regards to setting the Html/hmt defaults I said "on the Internet", and because of the many postings that explain that process, I didn't insert any links. A search "setting html/hmt defaults" currently finds around 364,00. Please take this in the friendly spirit it is meant to represent.

Try3 said:

hmt defaults?

mht?

Denis

Now there is an interesting issue. I did set only the hmt default. The one right above the html. I never touched mht, html, nor mhmtl.

But correctly I should have paid attention in particular to mht, because that's the extension that Outlook uses to send the message to the browser.

Why my hmt setting alone worked, I can't say. I can surmise that Win 10 does it's thing about trying to be smart and changed the mht setting as well. Purely conjecture. But it could be.