When selecting my inbox outlook shows the email in the reading body I dont want it to do that

Hi Kal-D, thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

I am not sure if there was an update late last year but that's when the red outline appeared and the problem

I have mentioned about showing the email only this last few weeks.

As you said my settings look correct and have not changed for as long as Hotmail has been

moved to Outlook.

So I guess it's one of those "fixes/updates" no one asked for and we just have to put up with.

At this time I have spent to much time and what little brain power I have left on it so I will just get use to it and

mumble to myself under my breath every time I see it happen.

Many thanks again.

Hi Phillip Stroud-Watts,

From your screenshots, your Settings > Mail > Layout options already look correct.

The key distinction is that “Only the selected message” controls how a conversation is displayed in the Reading Pane. It doesn’t normally prevent Outlook from selecting a message when you click into the Inbox.

One setting still worth checking is the Reading Pane option for marking items as read automatically. Turning that off can help prevent messages from being marked as read when they’re previewed, although it usually doesn’t stop Outlook from selecting the first message.

If your main goal is to prevent both the automatic preview and the red outline/highlight, the workaround is to set the Reading Pane to Off. You can then open only the messages you want by double‑clicking them, or by selecting one and pressing Enter.

As for the red outline, that’s simply the current selection/focus highlight. At this time, I’m not aware of a separate setting that removes only that highlight while keeping the same layout.

There doesn’t appear to be a setting that keeps the Reading Pane at the bottom without Outlook selecting a message. You can adjust the “mark as read” behavior, but turning the Reading Pane off is the only reliable way to stop both behaviors.

If this behavior doesn’t fit your workflow, you can also submit feedback directly to Microsoft via the Feedback portal, as that’s the channel the product team uses to track feature requests.

Please let me know if this proves useful to you, or if you would like further assistance.

I'm looking forward to your reply.

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To stop Outlook from automatically showing a message in the Reading Pane and to control when items are marked as read, adjust the Reading Pane settings in Classic Outlook.

1. In Classic Outlook, go to the View tab on the ribbon.
2. In the Layout group, select Reading Pane.
3. Choose Bottom (or Right) to keep using the Reading Pane, or Off if a message preview should never appear.
4. Select Reading Pane again, then choose Options….
5. In the Reading Pane options dialog:
   • Clear Mark items as read when viewed in the Reading Pane if messages should not be auto‑marked as read just by being selected.
   • Or adjust Wait n seconds before marking item as read to a higher value so that a brief selection does not immediately mark it as read.

With these settings, Outlook will only show a message in the Reading Pane when it is explicitly selected in the message list, and the timing for when it becomes “Read” can be controlled. The red outline and highlighting behavior are part of the current selection style and are tied to which item is selected in the Reading Pane and message list; reducing automatic selection and read‑status changes will minimize how often that highlight appears.

References:

• Use and configure the Reading Pane to preview messages in Outlook
• Change how the message list is displayed in Outlook
• How to change marking read without having to do the pop up window? (Classic Outlook for Windows) - Microsoft Q&A