Read receipts let email senders know whether recipients opened the messages sent to them. Senders can request read receipts in Outlook either with single messages or by default with all messages. Recipients can turn off read receipts to protect their privacy. Anyone using Outlook in combination with Microsoft Exchange is eligible to use these particular features.
How to Send Read Receipts with Your Messages
Requesting a read receipt is a tricky option in Outlook. To begin, your recipient is notified that you’re asking for a read receipt, so they have the option to deny your request. By requesting a read receipt, recipients may feel that you’re invading their privacy. If recipients are customers, you may turn them off from doing business. Customers don’t normally like when businesses try to invade privacy or identify with any email reading habits.
If you are sure you want to send a read receipt, you can request a receipt with the following instructions.
First, open a new email message and type the message you want to send. Click the “File” tab and click “Options.” From the list of selections, click “Mail.” There are two main options in this configuration window. Check “Read receipt confirming the recipient viewed the message” to get a read receipt. There is another option that confirms delivery of your email message. Check “Delivery receipt confirming the message was delivered to the recipient’s e-mail server” to confirm only that the message was delivered. This option is less intrusive than a read receipt, but it only confirms that the message was delivered to the recipient’s email server and not read.
With this setting, a read receipt is sent to you every time a user reads your email.
Keep in mind that in third-party applications that aren’t compatible with Microsoft Outlook, read receipts won’t work. This includes many of the free email services such as Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. They will display a ‘relay’ confirmation however, confirming your server delivered the email to the receiver’s server.
Block Read Receipts
With the option to request read receipts, Outlook also offers your recipients the option to block read receipts. If you don’t want to send receipts, this is how you stop them from being sent.
Click the “File” tab and click “Options.” Click the “Mail” option in the left navigation panel. Notice several options in the opened window. In the “Tracking” section, check the box labeled “Never send a read receipt.” Click “OK” to save your settings.
The option stops read receipts from being sent when you open email or just preview the messages in the preview panel.
In Closing
Read receipts are a great way to track when emails are read, but some recipients may find them intrusive. You are better off requesting read receipts for individual emails, rather than requesting them by default. Read receipts are turned off by default, so you must set them when you want to receive them in any version of Outlook.