Do you ever read an email and think to yourself, “I’ll respond to that later”, and then, forget? Do you sometimes read emails and realize that the time it would take to respond is more than you have at the moment, but again, forget to come back to that email?

You are not alone! In fact, if this was a vlog (or video blog) instead of a blog, you’d see me, the writer, pointing at myself as this, was, a problem I used to face. … Yes, was, past tense.

I’ve adjusted my Outlook so that emails are not automatically marked as read just because I clicked on them. All emails in my Outlook stay as unread until I respond to them, or mark them as unread. This way, if I just quickly read an email, but don’t respond to it, it stays as unread as a sign to myself that I need to come back to this email. This strategy, of leaving your emails marked as unread, can be used by you too, with only a few simple adjustments!

Changing How & When Emails are Marked as Read

The default is that Outlook marks a message as read as soon as you click on it. In order to change that, follow these steps:

1. In Outlook, select file, then options, and then advanced
2. Look for the section on “outlook panes”, and select “reading pane”
3. uncheck both of the following:
   • “mark items as read when viewed in the reading pane”
   • “mark item as read when the selection changes”

That’s it! Now when you go to read emails in Outlook, they will stay marked as unread until you reply to them, or manually mark it as read (which you can do by right clicking on the email and selecting “mark as read”).

Microsoft Support Article, Mark a Message as Read or Unread

Bonus Tip!

Filter your emails by “unread” instead of “all” to display unread emails at the top of your inbox!

Microsoft Support Article, View Only Unread Messages in Outlook

Availability Notice

The features outlined in this blog are available in the following Outlook versions: Outlook for Microsoft 365, Outlook 2021, Outlook 2019, Outlook 2016, and Outlook 2013.