title: How to insert HTML (including images) in an e-mail in Outlook 2016+
body: <p>Although Outlook sends e-mails as HTML by default, Microsoft seems to want to make it hard for us to write that HTML ourselves. One important reason for using HTML is to keep the size of an e-mail down when inserting an image by using an <code>&lt;img&gt;</code> tag to access the image from online instead of inserting the image itself in the body of the e-mail.</p>
  
  <p>Several sources [e.g., <a href="https://www.lenetek.com/blog/how-to-create-html-emails-in-outlook/" rel="noreferrer">1</a>, <a href="https://www.msoutlook.info/question/insert-html-code-directly-into-an-email" rel="noreferrer">2</a>] say that the way to do this is to use "Insert as Text" to insert a file containing the HTML code. But as of Office 2016, the "Insert as Text" option is no longer available by default. Fortunately though, there are also sources [e.g., <a href="https://www.msoutlook.info/question/classic-attach-file-button" rel="noreferrer">3</a>] that show how to get it back.</p>
  
  <p>However, when I tried this, Outlook did not interpret my HTML. So, for example, if I make a file containing the line:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;img src="https://www.lenetek.com/blog/how-to-create-html-emails-in-outlook/images/attach_file.jpg" alt="Random online image"&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and then use "Insert as Text" to insert that line in my e-mail, the result is just that line of code, not the image. What am I doing wrong?</p>
  
  <p>(As indicated by the alt attribute, the image file in that example is just a random online image that appears in one of the articles referenced above. I have no affiliation with that website.)</p>