No longer able to drag and drop as attachment icon in Outlook for Mac

Patrick Merriman 55 Reputation points
2025-09-17T23:16:23.0266667+00:00

I'm no longer able to drag and drop images files into Outlook emails without them showing as an icon. I do not want the photo embedded in the of my emails. I only want it to appear as an attachment icon.

Outlook | MacOS | New Outlook for Mac | For business
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  1. Hani-Ng 5,790 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2025-09-18T03:23:25.3133333+00:00

    Hi Patrick Merriman

    Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum and for providing your detailed feedback about the drag-and-drop feature in the New Outlook for Mac.

    Based on your description, I understand that you expect to drag an image file into an email and have it appeared as an attachment icon, but instead, it is being embedded directly into the email body.

    After reviewing your scenario, I tested this on my own Mac and experienced the exact same behavior. You are not alone in this. This is a common point of feedback we are seeing from many users who, like you, rely on the ability to send images as simple file attachments. We recognize how inconvenient this change is and how it disrupts a fast and efficient workflow.

    This behavior appears to be a design change in the New Outlook, but given the volume of feedback, it's possible it may be a bug or a feature that needs to be revisited. The most effective way to let our engineering team know that this is a critical issue is to send feedback directly through the application. They use this data to track user impact and prioritize fixes for future updates.

    To submit feedback, please go to Help > Feedback > Report a Problem and make sure to include your Outlook version

    User's image

    To check Outlook version, go to Outlook > About Outlook.

    User's image Your feedback, along with that of others experiencing the same issue, will have an impact on Microsoft. They are committed to resolving this problem as quickly as possible

    In the meantime, while our team reviews this, I have found a reliable workaround that you can use right away. I've found this method to be very effective: Compress the File(s) into a ZIP Archive

    This is a great method if you are sending multiple images or want to absolutely guarantee the file is not embedded.

    • In Finder, select the image file (or multiple image files) > Right-click on the selected file(s) and choose "Compress" from the context menu and this will create a new .zip file (e.g., Archive.zip).
    • Drag and drop this .zip file into your Outlook email.

    Because Outlook cannot display the content of a zip file, it will be forced to attach it as an icon, achieving the result you need.

    We sincerely appreciate your patience and for taking the time to help us improve our products. Your feedback truly means a lot to us.

    And of course, if you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out via comment section.


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  1. Hornblower409 2,675 Reputation points
    2025-12-12T11:02:15.9+00:00

    You can vote for and comment on this Outlook Mac Feature Request.

    Drag images into email as attachments without embedding
    https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/bd5106b6-31d0-f011-ad8f-7c1e52f38cbc

    It used to be possible to drag images onto the subject or from/to box so they would be sent as attachments rather than embedded images. This function has been removed in new outlook and you have to manually navigate to the image via the ATTACH icon which is a much longer and laborious process

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