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How to Customize the Reading Pane in Outlook

• Rob Woodgate

  @agiledoc

Outlooks Reading panea.k.a. Preview panedisplays the text of a message youve selected, preventing you from having to open the actual message to work with it. Heres how to customize the Reading pane to suit your needs.

Outlook comes with several different panes, including those you see by defaultthe Navigation pane, for exampleand others you might not bother with muchlike the To-Do and People panes. Each of these is designed to make it easier to find, see, and manage things in Outlook.Were going be taking a look at these panes throughout several articles, showing you how to access, work with, and customize them. And were starting with the Reading pane.

The Reading pane is enabled by default. When you click on a message in any folder, the pane displays the contents of that message, along with basic controls for replying and forwarding the message.

By default, Outlook shows the Reading pane to the right of the folders and messages, but you can change this by going to View > Reading Pane.

Your options are to change the position to Bottom (so Outlook shows the Reading pane below messages) or Off, which hides the Reading pane. These options apply to the Reading pane no matter what folder youre in, so you cant set a different position setting for different folders.

Setting the pane to Bottom means you see fewermessages in the folder, but you see more details about that message and more of its content in the Reading pane. This was the traditional view before the advent of wide-screen monitors, and many people still favor it.

Setting the pane to Off maximizes the number of items you can see in the folder, but you dont see any of the mail content. This is a useful option if youre clearing out mail, especially if you use it in conjunction with the View > Message Preview function.

In the standard folder view, Message Preview is turned off. This means that you just see the information shown in the columns in the folderTo, From, Subject, Received, and so on. But if you set Message Preview to 1 Line, 2 Lines, or 3 Lines, youll also see 1, 2 or 3 lines of the content of each message, without needing the Reading pane. Some people love this setting; some find it too cluttered. Youll have to experiment with it to see what you think.

RELATED: How to Create and Customize a Folder View in Outlook

But the Reading pane does more than show you the contents of your message. It also determines how Outlook marks messages as read and lets you move through your messages using a single key. By default, Outlook marks a mail as read once youve spent five seconds with it selected, but you can change this by going to View > Reading Pane and selecting Options.

Of course, this being Outlook, there are other ways to access these options. You can also go to File > Options > Mail > Reading Pane (or Advanced > Reading pane) to open the same options.

Whichever way you choose, the Reading pane window will appear.

Out of the box, Outlook will Mark items as read when viewed in the Reading Pane after five seconds. You can change this time to anything from zero (i.e., its marked as read immediately when you select it) to 999 seconds. If you want Outlook to wait more than a few seconds then you might prefer the second option, Mark item as read when the selection changes. This is an either/or situation: you can tell Outlook to mark items as read after a particular time, or you can tell Outlook to mark items as read when you move to another item, but not both.

The next option, Single key reading using space bar is really useful if you like to navigate using the keyboard. When you reach a message thats longer than the Reading pane can show, you can hit the space bar to move down a page in that message. When you reach the end of the message, hitting spacebar moves to the next message. This works well in conjunction with using the Up and Down arrows to navigate through your folderthey let you move through the folder, and the spacebar lets you move through the selected message.

Finally, there is the Turn on automatic full-screen reading in portrait orientation option. This is for tablet users, and if its switched on then when your tablet is in portrait orientation, clicking a messageminimizes the Navigation pane, hides the reading pane, and displays the selected message using the full screen. This wont work if you select the message using the Up and Down arrows or the spacebaronly if you select the message using the trackpad/mouse or your finger.

If youre not working in portrait orientation and you want a little more screen real estate to view your messages, you can switch to Reading mode by clicking on the icon at the bottom of the Outlook window.

This minimizes any other pinned panesNavigation, To-Do,and Peopleto let you focus on your messages. You can display the panes again by clicking the Normal mode icon.

The Reading pane can also help you read messages that are in a smaller than usual font, or ifas weve occasionally doneyouve left your reading glasses at home. Use the Zoom control at the bottom of the Reading pane to increase the size of the contents (or make it smaller if its too large).

You can also zoom by holding Ctrl while using the scroll wheel on your mouse. This works on a per message basis, so if you increase the size of one message, the zoom level on the next message you select will still be 100%.

None of these options work if View > Reading Pane is set to Off, though. They only work if the Reading pane is set to Right or Bottom.

The Reading pane is a simple but fundamental part of the Outlook app, with plenty of useful features to help you shape your reading experience the way you want it. If youve traditionally turned it off then now might be a good time to turn it back on and see if it can help make your workflow a little more pleasant and efficient.