The setting is not checked by default, and probably for a good reason. Note: There is another interesting setting in the Reading Pane, which allows you to mark items as read when selecting different items in your Inbox.
In the opened dialog, go ahead and uncheck the first box as shown below.Now, go ahead and hit the Reading Panes button.
You can follow this procedure to turn off the single click read feature, so that Outlook doesn’t mark messages as read: Here we go: Don’t make as read on Outlook for Windows In our answer, we’ll be covering both Windows and macOS unread settings for Outlook. Now the question is the following: is there a way to modify the read / unread settings to keep my messages marked as unread in Outlook unless i explicitly set them as read (by making a right click and selecting Mark as Read). What’s annoying is that i have noticed that items that i view in the Reading Pane are shown as being read as well… This makes it difficult for me to follow up on my email and take the required action.
I have noticed that after i click on a specific email entry in the Outlook Mail tab and open it for reading, it shows as read.
