E-mails read in Preview pane and deleted show as "Not Read"

[Christina]

I'm hoping someone can help me to understand the logic Outlook 2003 uses to
determine if an e-mail has been read or not. I apologize for the lengthiness
but I wanted to be thorough

My understanding is that an e-mail can show as being read by either opening
it, reading it in the Preview Pane, or manually changing the status to
"Read". In numerous situations, I have received notifications that certain
message were deleted without being read. However, the recipients have said
that they read the message in the reading pane and then deleted it. If this
was the case, why would Outlook send me a notice that it was deleted without
being read?

As an experiment, I turned on my own reading pane and sent myself an e-mail,
which I read in the PReview pane and deleted. In this instance, I deleted it
before moving to the next message (which would have marked it as read).
However, I never received a notification at all, either of it being read or
not.

This has become somewhat of a hot topic in our office since the
notifications of an e-mail not being read have potentially negative
connotations...

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Christina

 

[Judy Gleeson \(MVP Outlook\)]

You've said you can mark as Read by "opening in the Reading Pane" - you are
NOT opening it you are viewing it.

The settings each user can select for how the Reading Pane treats emails are
at Tools | Options | Other | Reading Pane.

If I set mine to Mark Items as Read after 12 seconds, then after viewing an
email in the Pane for 12 seconds it's marked Read. If the sender asked for
a Read Receipt they will get one (or I'll see a window saying they asked for
one and giving me the choice to say NO)

If I set mine with the top two settings unchecked, my emails WILL NOT be
marked as Read when I view in the Reading Pane. This is fun when the
controlling types send me emails. I read each email, then later in the week
do some filing and Delete a whole stack. The Read Receipts the senders
receive say something along the lines of Deleted without Opening.

You don't have to Open to Read. You don't have to notify that you Read it to
Read it.

I hope this helps you at least a little bit!

Judy Gleeson
MVP Outlook
Outlook trainer and author of Productiv_IT with Outlook

read my articles here: www.judygleeson.com
www.acorntraining.com.au
Canberra, Australia

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
Johann von Neumann (1903 - 1957)