Microsoft admits one of the most crucial Outlook features is currently broken

Microsoft is making some decent progress when it comes to Windows 11. Recently we have confirmed reports of some rather useful improvements landing in the next version of the OS, 26H2, wherein GPU driver TDR crashes may finally be fixed, plus the company is also allowing users to disable web content on the Search.

On the Outlook front though things have not been so rosy. Last month in May we reported several problems affecting basic functionalities on the app. These included a problem where documents would open blank or corrupt themselves. Following that, Quick Steps, a very useful feature, would no longer work correctly, and finally, Microsoft acknowledged a problem wherein images would fail to load up properly inside the email.

Microsoft had resolved those bugs later and almost exactly a month after we reported on them, the company has now admitted a new similarly basic issue, this time on Macs. Users recently started noticing that Outlook would no longer display email threads properly as the original message itself was not displayed.

An affected user Tsoumpas, C (ngmb) nicely described the problem in a forum post they made on Microsoft's site. They wrote:

"Description of the issue: After updating Outlook for Mac [Version 16.110 (26061317)] on 18/6/2026, replying to any email no longer includes the original message in the reply window. Prior to the update, replies correctly contained the original email text below my response.

Expected behavior: The original message should be included in the reply, as in previous Outlook versions and according to the configured reply settings.

Actual behavior: The reply window contains only a blank composition area (or only my response), with none of the original email text included."

Obviously this must be a highly frustrating for users as noted by several in that thread. The post, at the time of writing, has also been upvoted by more than 40 users indicating that is a fairly widespread bug.

Thankfully Microsoft seems to have acknowledged the problem right around that time as it opened a new issue on its official website. In the support article, the company recommends switching to Outlook for Mac from the legacy app, where the problem appears to be happening.