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IE7 breaks HTML copy and paste from Outlook XP for images and graphics

This evening I tried installing the latest version of Internet Explorer. I didn’t have any problems with the installation, but quickly discovered that upgrading from IE6 to IE7 apparently breaks HTML copy and paste from Outlook XP (2002) into Microsoft Word.

I typically use that feature to select text and graphics from HTML e-mail and paste it into Word documents for editing and formatting.

After installing IE7, text from the copied selection within Outlook can still be pasted into a Word document without any problems, but any images in the selection turn up as empty picture objects. So I end up with text, and blanks where the images should be.

This might be related to new browser security settings somewhere, but I don’t have time to sort it out at the moment and a quick online search doesn’t turn up any obvious fixes. However, uninstalling IE7 apparently does restore the old IE6 HTML handlers used by Outlook, which fixes this problem. I think Outlook just uses the latest version of the HTML layout control on the system.

I don’t have a pressing need to upgrade to IE7, as these days I mostly run Firefox, making extensive use of the tabbed browsing feature. However, some sites require Internet Explorer, and others don’t print well in Firefox, so I still regularly use both. I was looking forward to tabbed browsing in IE, though.

If anyone knows how to fix the image copy-paste behavior, I’ll give IE7 another try. I’m done with it for now.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 11th, 2006 at 6:45 pm and is filed under windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “IE7 breaks HTML copy and paste from Outlook XP for images and graphics”

  1. Victor Says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 10:05 am

    I’m not sure if this was done on purpose or not because it’s worked sporadically. I’m running word 2003 sp2 and outlook 2003 sp2. Usually, I’ll try opening a word document first before I do anything else (accessing outlook) and it usually works just fine. But I believe there’s an issue between the outlook clipboard and the office clipboard that probably requires a microsoft fix.

  2. paul Says:
    July 25th, 2007 at 6:07 am

    i haven’t verified this, but i think your hunch on the security issue is a good one. i have found ie7’s security restriction cumbersome. they inhibit a lot of things that are actually useful.

  3. Geoff Glave Says:
    November 22nd, 2007 at 2:22 pm

    I’m cursing this right now, and googling turned up your blog. Did you ever find a solution?

  4. Peter Says:
    May 21st, 2008 at 6:02 am

    Hi,

    I have the same problem. I can’t copy images that are in HTML emails.

    I have Outlook 2007 and Internet Exploder 6.
    (I had to rollback from IE7, because it breaks Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software!)

    Thanks,
    Peter

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