How to change marking read without having to do the pop up window? (Classic Outlook for Windows)

I don't have the "Message Handling" option in my settings

Dear @Rachel Thurston, 

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.   

I understand how inconvenient it must be to have emails open in a separate pop‑up window or to rely on the right‑click menu just to change their Read or Unread status. 

In the New Outlook, the Reading Pane may be set to Popout only, which would explain why every time you select an email it opens in a new window. In addition, whether an email is marked as read automatically also depends on the settings in the Message handling section. 

The steps below will help you verify and adjust these settings: 

Step 1: Adjust the Reading Pane setting 

Open the New Outlook and select View. 

If the Reading Pane is set to Popout only, choose another layout such as Show on the right, whichever feels most comfortable for your workflow. 

Step 2: Adjust the “Mark as read” setting 

Go to Settings > Mail > Message handling. 

In the Mark as read section, select “Mark displayed items as read as soon as they’re selected”. 

Also make sure the option “Always keep items unread unless I explicitly mark them as read” is turned off. 

Once these settings are applied, selecting an email with a single or double click should allow Outlook to mark it as read without opening a separate window. 

Note: From my testing, there may be a slight delay when an email is opened in a pop‑out window using a double‑click, but it should still update shortly after. 

As an additional option, you can manually mark emails using the shortcuts Ctrl + Q (Mark as Read) and Ctrl + U (Mark as Unread). 

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I hope this information is helpful. If you have any questions or need further support, please don’t hesitate to reach out at any time. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding. 

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In the new Outlook desktop app, marking an email as read or unread typically requires either opening the email or using the right-click context menu. Unfortunately, there isn't a direct way to revert this behavior to automatically mark an email as read just by opening it without additional clicks.

However, you can streamline the process by using keyboard shortcuts. For example, you can select an email and press Ctrl + Q to mark it as read or Ctrl + U to mark it as unread. This can help reduce the reliance on the mouse and pop-up menus.

If you have further questions about customizing your Outlook experience, you may want to check the settings or help documentation for additional options.