Outlook and Teams link ignore user defaults and open in Edge by default now
Links in Microsoft Outlook open in Microsoft Edge by default now for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers. The change is coming to business subscribers and the Teams application as well.
Microsoft announced the change in February for Home customers, revealing that it would help customers stay focused. Back then, Microsoft made it sound as if customers had to enable the option stating “you can choose to open browser links from the Outlook app in Microsoft Edge”.
A support document, available here, confirms that it is the new default behavior: “If you have a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription, browser links from the Outlook app will open in Microsoft Edge by default, right alongside the email they’re from in the Microsoft Edge sidebar pane.”
Microsoft explains that this change allows users to “easily access, read, and respond to the message using [..] matching authenticated profile[s]”. Customers won’t have to switch between apps disruptively anymore according to Microsoft.
Image source: Unsplash
The announcement comes less than two months after Microsoft’s pledge to “put people in control of their Windows PC experience”. Back then, Microsoft committed that Windows users “are in control of changes to their pins and their defaults”.
The link opening change in Outlook and Teams breaks the promise, as it goes behind the backs of Microsoft 365 subscribers. Only subscribers who have set Edge as the default browser won’t be affected negatively by the change. All other users will have links opened not in their default web browser, which they selected for a purpose, but in Microsoft Edge, unless they become active and change it.
Microsoft is ignoring the choice of the user in this case. The company could have made the new feature opt-in, even display it as a new feature notification to users to give it more prominence. Instead, Microsoft made the change, giving users no say in the matter.
Petri displayed a screenshot of how the change looks in the Outlook mobile application. It appears that Outlook displays an open with dialog when links are activated for the first time. The default choice is a colorful Microsoft Edge entry, which has “Fast & Secure Browsing” written underneath it. There is also the plain colorless Default Browser entry, which has “Configure in Settings” listed underneath it.
If Edge is not installed, users will see an option to download Microsoft Edge instead. An option to “remember my choice” is provided.
The same change is also planned for Microsoft Teams. All links from Teams will open by default in Microsoft Edge, once the change goes life.
Only Enterprise customers retain full control over default browsers. They may restore the default behavior in the Cloud Policy Service for Microsoft 365 or make changes for users individually.
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