ms crashed, local shop got it going again, now outlook broke

Try clicking this button:

but a .PNG is likely smaller and non-lossy

You are using the web-based Outlook (I think). When you create a new email, do you see the menu 'Home View Help ...' in the snip below:

If so, just select 'insert' and you should get a choice of source. To paste text, just rt-click inside the text body, and you should get some options including paste.

That's exaclty what is going on. thanks so much. By any chance is there a way to go back to the offline version?

Butch Atkinson said:

That's exaclty what is going on. thanks so much. By any chance is there a way to go back to the offline version?

I don't really know what that means - probably an installed program? In that case, you have to install it, and to do that you need either a licenced copy of Outlook (or Office) on a CD or USB stick, or a MS 365 account (I don't have or use that). If you had a legitimate installed version before the problem, then repeat whatever you did to initially install that.