Have you just upgraded to the latest version of Office 365 and found that the way attachments work has completely changed?

Office 365 now sends links to documents instead of the file itself to save space.

Some of our clients have been calling in about this issue/change for a bit of IT Support. Microsoft will implement new features without making end users aware. This feature has been on the development roadmap for a while though and is designed to save storage space in Exchange online, and improve workflow. It also probably saves Microsoft a bit of electricity in their data centres, probably.

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Where do I see this feature?

When you open a new email in Outlook 2016 and you want to attach a file most users will click the attach button in the email menu. Doing this now will present you with a list of the most recent documents you have used, and should the thing you are looking for not be there the option to browse for the file.

Once you select a file it will seemingly attach itself to the email.

The good news is that you can still easily attach documents. All you need do is click on the dropdown menu for the attachment and choose "Attach As Copy".

Why use the link sending feature at all?

Internally to your business it makes a lot of sense. Documents should be worked on through the system so they are always saved, and if versioning is turned on then versioned as well. We all spend a lot of time looking for things in our filing systems too, this should help users get to documents quicker, and ensure everyone is working on the same document version. Externally however it doesnt really work as a concept, yet.

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