Link to Microsoft Outlook 365 Webmail email

Question

I use Microsoft email at work. I use the webmail interface. (I think this is called Outlook 365 webmail). I notice that when you read an email a unique URL shows at the top of the screen. What I would like to be able to do is copy and paste that URL into my organisational software (I use "Checkvist" which is an online outliner which is vaguely similar to Org-Mode). This is so that I can link certain tasks to certain emails. However, when I copy the URL and paste it into a new window, nothing happens (it takes me to the web app, but does not open the relevant email). Does anyone know a way to go to the relevant email using the URL?

Thanks

N

Answer 1

So I have found the following ways after much trial and error this morning:

Solution 1 - Create URL using the ID from email URL

Firstly for this to work you need to turn off conversation mode in OWA, you can do this by clicking the cog in the top right whilst in your mailbox then under "Conversation View" set this to off. (This is so the URL when you have an email selected will give you the message/item ID and not the conversation ID.)

Then select the email that you want to create a link to, the URL will look like below but with [MESSAGE_ID] showing the full message ID in a URL encoded format.

https://outlook.office.com/mail/inbox/id/[MESSAGE_ID]

Copy the full [MESSAGE_ID] and insert it as shown in the following URL:

https://outlook.office.com/owa/?ItemID=[MESSAGE_ID]&viewmodel=ReadMessageItem&path=&exvsurl=1

When opening this link it will take you directly to the email.

Please see the below powershell script that will open a form, you insert the URL copied from the browser into the 1st text box and click "Convert", this will then return the URL that will point to the email in O365 and clear the 1st field so that its quick to convert a few in a row, also the window should stay top most. This will still require the conversion mode to be set to off as mentioned in the 1st paragraph. I would like to add that this has been very quickly knocked up using PoshGUI editor and anchors etc have not been set so expanding the window may not have the desired effect.

Function Convert-URL{
Param(
    [String]$O365_URL
)
    $inputURL = $O365_URL
    $returnURL = "https://outlook.office.com/owa/?ItemID=" + ($inputURL | Split-Path -Leaf) + "&viewmodel=ReadMessageItem&path=&exvsurl=1"
    $returnURL
}

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
[System.Windows.Forms.Application]::EnableVisualStyles()

$Form                            = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.Form
$Form.ClientSize                 = '735,80'
$Form.text                       = "O365 URL Convertor"
$Form.TopMost                    = $true

$TextBox1                        = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.TextBox
$TextBox1.multiline              = $false
$TextBox1.width                  = 446
$TextBox1.height                 = 20
$TextBox1.location               = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(150,5)
$TextBox1.Font                   = 'Microsoft Sans Serif,10'

$Label1                          = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.Label
$Label1.text                     = "Insert URL"
$Label1.AutoSize                 = $true
$Label1.width                    = 25
$Label1.height                   = 10
$Label1.location                 = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(21,12)
$Label1.Font                     = 'Microsoft Sans Serif,10'

$Label2                          = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.Label
$Label2.text                     = "Returned URL"
$Label2.AutoSize                 = $true
$Label2.width                    = 25
$Label2.height                   = 10
$Label2.location                 = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(21,38)
$Label2.Font                     = 'Microsoft Sans Serif,10'

$TextBox2                        = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.TextBox
$TextBox2.multiline              = $false
$TextBox2.width                  = 446
$TextBox2.height                 = 20
$TextBox2.location               = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(150,34)
$TextBox2.Font                   = 'Microsoft Sans Serif,10'

$Button1                         = New-Object system.Windows.Forms.Button
$Button1.text                    = "Convert"
$Button1.width                   = 100
$Button1.height                  = 30
$Button1.location                = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(619,9)
$Button1.Font                    = 'Microsoft Sans Serif,10'

$Form.controls.AddRange(@($TextBox1,$Label1,$Label2,$TextBox2,$Button1))

$Button1.Add_Click({$TextBox2.Text = Convert-URL -O365_URL $TextBox1.Text; $TextBox1.Text = "";})

$Form.ShowDialog()

Solution 2 - Office 365 Graph API

The property "Weblink" is returned from the "Get-Message" API request.

Please see the below sources that show this property:

Under the response you will see the "weblink" property, the URL is constructed the same as the solution above.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/message-get?view=graph-rest-1.0&tabs=http

The following link is to the graph explorer, of which you can sign in and interact with the graph API to see a working example, after signing in click "Get My Mail" in the left pane". This will return an API response in the bottom right of all you emails and you will the weblink returned for each email in this window.

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/graph-explorer

However whilst the above is not very practical to use manually, this is where I would start to make a script / programme to retrieve the URL.

Answer 2

You can get an email URL by:

1. Right-click the email and/or thread and "Create Task"
2. Switch to To-Do / Tasks (bottom left of OWA interface menu, checkmark icon)
3. Click on the task
4. Right side info pane opens up
5. Copy the link from the text "Open in Outlook"

This is a link to the message and/or the conversation. I haven't tested specifically but it will at least get you to a message from the thread you're looking for.

It's a little bit of a pain for high-level use but casual integration with a task program would be fine.

This does open the message in a new tab, which is not ideal; but again, it may be more for memory/follow-up than for quick-fire GTD stuff.

Answer 3

I added an HTMLText control on the form and set the default to this. The form field maps MessageId to this control. I have display mode as view so saving doesn't add the HTMLText. Now the Sharepoint List has a direct link to the message in Outlook.

<a href=""https://outlook.office365.com/owa/?ItemID=" & EncodeUrl(Parent.Default) & "&exvsurl=1&viewmodel=ReadMessageItem"">[open]</a>

Later, I used Power Automate to add new email to a SharePoint List and build the same URL format to automatically set the message link and conversation links.

SharePoint lets you customize the details form to show PowerApps:

In PowerApps, you can add HTML controls to your form. Above you can edit the HTML text to use an anchor link that opens on the outlook web with your message.

Answer 4

Here's an easier way to get to CraftyB's solution using a bookmarklet in Firefox:

Create a new bookmark in the Bookmarks toolbar:

Use this javascript as the URL:

javascript:(function() {
window.open('https://outlook.office365.com/owa/?ItemID='
.concat(window.location.href.split("/id/")[1])
.concat('&exvsurl=1&viewmodel=ReadMessageItem')
)
;})()

Name it whatever you want and maybe add a keyword:

Now whenever you want to create a permalink, find the email in question (so it's visible in the right side pane), and click the bookmarklet (or enter your keyword into the URL bar) and it will open a new tab to a permalink URL for that message.

This variant replaces the current tab, if that's useful to anyone:

javascript:(function() {
window.location='https://outlook.office365.com/owa/?ItemID='
.concat(window.location.href.split("/id/")[1])
.concat('&exvsurl=1&viewmodel=ReadMessageItem')
;})()

Answer 5

I have found a relatively non-technical work around for this question after a lot of trial and error. I save alot of emails in OneNote, and in older versions of One Note, you can drag and drop specific emails to be saved on the page. But this isn't possible in OneNote 365 (to my knowledge).

However, I have found that I can save a print out of the email in OneNote, and then copy and paste the hyperlink to the specific email in the outlook webmail interface. However, the trick/work-around as far as I can tell, is that the email CANNOT be still in the inbox, but must have been moved to a different folder. If it remains in the inbox when you copy-and-paste the hyperlink, when you click on it, it will just open the inbox, instead of opening the specific email you want. This works for me in both Chrome and Edge, I hope others also find it useful.

Answer 6

options might have improved - on the browser version, I disabled the conversation view, open the email, copy the link from the browser view and paste it in the other app. when i click on the link in the other app, it opens exactly this email. (using office 365)

Answer 7

One work around that's similar to the right-click and "Create Task" option but maybe slightly easier, just flag the email, then open Microsoft To Do and the message will appear in the Flagged Emails list. Then you can just right click on "Open in Outlook" and copy the link. You'll notice that the URL is different than what appears in the address bar when you simply click on the email in the inbox.