Make Outlook 2007 Mark Items as Read When Viewed in Reading Pane

One of my friends contacted me a while back asking why the default setting in Outlook 2007 is to not mark items as read until you switch to a different email, which leaves the new mail notification sitting in the system tray even though you’ve clearly read the email.

Turns out there’s a very simple setting for this, where you can mark items as read once you’ve viewed them instead of when the selection changes to a different email.

Just go to Tools \ Options and then click on the Other tab. Click the Reading Pane button to bring up the options.\

Just select the checkbox on “Mark items as read when viewed in the Reading Pane”. You’ll notice that you can’t also select the “Mark item as read when selection changes” box, which seems a little silly, but it’s not important. You might also want to change the number of seconds in this dialog. It doesn’t usually take me 5 seconds to read an email, especially when most of them aren’t important.

Remember that you can always mark an item as read by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Q, which is really the fastest way to mark items as read.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. This article was written on 07/3/07 and tagged with: Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook

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Comments (18)

1. October 1, 2007 7:09 am
   thes

   Thanks much – this is what I needed.

2. March 25, 2008 3:38 am
   Sudha

   Thanks. This was very helpful

3. March 30, 2008 9:21 pm
   Naman

   thank you again! that has been annoying the **** out of me for weeks!

4. May 29, 2008 11:56 pm
   Liam

   You took the words right out of my mouth Naman

5. July 10, 2008 10:40 pm
   Chris Sherlock

   Well that’s intuitive for you.

6. September 10, 2008 2:17 am
   MicL

   Thanks! Very helpful!

7. September 11, 2008 12:15 pm
   That_guy

   You know, the last time I had to do this was about a year or so ago, when first setting up my Outlook profile when OL2007 first came out. New job, new computer and whoa, how did I do that before???

   Thank you for posting the obvious for folks like me who tend to forget.

8. September 18, 2008 9:12 pm
   Dec

   I don’t know why they made this option so difficult to find in the new version of Office.

   It used to be 1 click from the reading pane, which is why it was never an annoying issue before…

9. September 19, 2008 7:24 am
   Jason

   Thank you very very much! Knew I could do it but had to remember how to.

10. October 8, 2008 10:39 pm
    Dem

    Thanks for the answer! Once again, it’s faster to Google for an answer on a Microsoft setting then battle Microsoft’s unintuitive UI with settings scattered throughout a completely bizarre labyrinth of different menus, windows, buttons, and tabs.

11. October 15, 2008 1:28 pm
    Rob

    Thank you so much! This is exactly what I’ve been struggling to find today!

12. October 27, 2008 2:52 am
    Per

    Me too.. I used to have this setting with Outlook 2003 but didn’t find it in Outlook 2007 – so, great, thanks!

13. December 3, 2008 7:50 am
    JL

    Thank you so much for this, i have been searching thru Outlook all bloody day for this.. why hide it?? THANK YOU THANK YOU

14. January 13, 2009 6:18 am
    Jason

    thank you thank you

15. February 10, 2009 4:08 am
    bjorri

    Yes!!!!

16. April 23, 2009 11:28 pm
    Rajkumar

    Thanks it’s very useful for me.

17. May 19, 2009 7:37 am
    marcopolo

    Thanks. That’s what I needed. I wonder why they made this the default setting and not the other way around. Annoying!!!

18. July 2, 2009 1:44 pm
    vdogg

    thanks!