When you call someone and they don’t answer, at least you know they didn’t answer. However, when it comes to email, you don’t get notified if someone actually read your email. You are completely in the dark until the recipient decides to send you a reply and reply to your letter.
If you are using Outlook as your email client, there is actually a feature that can help you deal with situations like the one above. A read receipt in Outlook lets you know if someone has opened an email you sent.
This feature needs to be configured before you can use it for your emails.
What is a delivery receipt in Outlook
Outlook actually allows you to request two types of receipts: read receipts and delivery receipts. Both are two different things, and we’ll explain how they work here.
A delivery receipt is a receipt that is generated when your email is delivered. He confirms that your email was sent to the recipient and it should be in his inbox.
What is a read receipt in Outlook?
On the other hand, a read receipt is a receipt generated when your letter was actually opened by the recipient. As long as your email remains unread or unopened in your inbox, this receipt is not generated.
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So you can be sure that someone looked at your email when you received this receipt.
However, keep in mind that not all email service providers and applications support read receipts in Outlook. For those that don’t support it, you won’t receive receipts for your emails in Outlook.
Request a read receipt for a single email in Outlook For Desktop
Outlook lets you customize read receipts either for all outgoing emails or for selected ones. If you don’t need receipts for each letter, you can customize it only for the ones you need.
- Start Outlook on your computer.
- Click the New Email option to create a new email if not already open or saved in drafts.
- In a new email window, you will have several tabs at the top. You want to find the one that says “Options” and click on it.
- There are several sections on the Options tab, and one of them is Tracking. Here you will find two options that you can check and uncheck.
Select the Request Read Receipt checkbox if you want to receive a receipt when the recipient opens this email of yours.
If you wish, you can check the “Request a receipt for delivery” option to receive a notification about the delivery of your letter.
- Then you can write the letter as usual.
Request a read receipt for all outgoing Outlook email messages
For those of you who require a read receipt for every outgoing email, the above method may not be ideal for you. A better solution would be to use one of the options in Outlook preferences, which allows you to enable read receipts for all Outlook emails you send.
This way, you won’t need to check any options every time you write a new letter. After that, all your outgoing emails will become trackable
- Start Outlook on your computer and click the File tab at the top.
- Find the option labeled “Options” in the left sidebar and click on it.
- Select “Mail” from the left sidebar in the settings menu.
- In the right pane, you will see several sections. Scroll down until you find Tracking.
Inside the section, you will find a Read Receipt checkbox confirming that the recipient has viewed the message. Check the box to enable this option. Then click “OK” at the bottom.
From now on, your Outlook will ask for a read receipt for all your outgoing emails.
Manage incoming read receipt requests in Outlook For Desktop
Similar to how you send read receipt request emails in Outlook, there may be people who also want to know if you’ve read the emails they sent you. In fact, you can manually determine what Outlook should do when it encounters a read receipt request email.
- Launch Outlook on your computer, click the File tab at the top and click Options in the left sidebar.
- Select “Mail” in the left sidebar to open your email settings.
- Scroll down to the Tracking section and find the subsection that says “For any message received that contains a read request.”
In this section, you will find three self-explanatory options. You can enable any of these options and click “OK” at the bottom to save your changes.
Manage incoming read receipt requests in Outlook for the web
If you’re using the Outlook Web version, you too have the ability to decide what to do with read request emails. There is a parameter in the settings that allows you to configure this function.
- Access the Outlook Web version in any of your browsers.
- Click the settings icon at the top-right corner and select View All Outlook Settings.
- On the screen that opens, select the “Message Handling” option. There are several other options for handling email as well.
- Scroll down to the Read Receipts section and you will find three options that allow you to determine how read receipts should be handled. These are exactly the same options as in the desktop version of Outlook.
Choose any option from the list and click “Save” at the bottom.
Read receipts in Outlook are an extremely useful feature as they let you know if your email was actually read or if no one even bothered to open it. Let us know if you also find this feature helpful in the comments below.
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