How to Find Out Who Read an Email in Outlook

Read receipts tell you if a email message has been read or not.

Sometimes you want to know if someone has read an Outlook email you sent them. Outlook has read receipts built in so you can tell immediately the email was read. These read receipts need to be activated before you can tell if the email was read. Even though they generally work, the recipient can turn off this feature in his Outlook. Consequently, you could get no read receipt or a false "No Read:" receipt.

Instructions

1. Access your read receipts by opening your Email tracking options. This will apply to every message sent.

   To open your Email tracking options, open Outlook. Select "Tools" and "Options" from the menu bar. Select the "Preferences" tab and select "Email Options." Click "Tracking Options."

   Locate the "For message I send, request" area. Check the box beside "Read Receipts." Click "Ok" three times to finalize this process.

2. Access your read receipts by opening the Options tab. This will only apply to message where you set this option.

   To open your read receipts per message sent, start a new message. Open Outlook and select the Inbox. Click the "New" button on the menu bar. When the new email message opens, click on the "Options" tab. Check the box beside the "Request a Read Receipt."

3. Get read receipts when the recipient opens the email message. The read receipts will be sent to your inbox with the subject of "Read:" followed by the original subject of the email message. If they do not read the email, you will get a "No Read:" read receipt.

   Be warned that the recipient may have this feature turned off so in this case you will not receive a read receipt when they open the message. Also, if they read their messages in the preview pane, you could get a "No Read:" message because the message was read in the preview and not an actual open message.

References

• Microsoft: Delivery receipts and read receipts in Outlook