To know if an email you sent is opened or not, you can let the Outlook read receipt feature. Here're the exact steps you should follow.

In email communication, it is good to understand when the email you sent is delivered and received by the recipient. This is particularly useful in business and client-related email communications. For instance, if you're sending an invoice to your client, knowing when the recipient opens the email will remove lots of ambiguity and uncertainty. To get a notification when the email is opened, you need to manually enable the read receipt feature.

Thankfully, the Outlook Office application has a built-in option to enable or disable the read receipt feature. By picking out a checkbox, you can enable Outlook read receipt feature. It's not necessary to use any third-party plugin or service.

In this quick and simple post, allow me to show the best way to let the read receipt feature in Outlook application.

Steps Enable Outlook Read Receipt Feature in Windows 10

You can enable the Read Receipt Outlook feature when sending a brand new email. Here's how.

Open the Outlook application. You can do that from the beginning menu or by double-clicking on the desktop shortcut.
Click the "New Email" option underneath the "Home" tab.
When the Email Compose window opens, visit the "Options" tab.
Within the options, choose the "Request a read receipt" checkbox.
Now, send your email normally.

That's all. It is that simple to enable the read receipt feature in Outlook.

Restrictions & Issues

Do remember that for that read receipt feature to work, the recipient should accept to send the read receipt. That's, the Outlook client asks the recipient if they want to send a read receipt. If the recipient don't want to send, they can reject the prompt. Rejecting a read receipt will not send you any kind of information. That's the reason why the option is known as "Request read receipt".

Also, with respect to the email client used by the recipient, the read receipt feature may not work. For example, if the client is using the Thunderbird email client, they may not even see the read receipt prompt. Since there is no official standard within the email communications world, each provider and service implements its own way to send and receive read receipts. This causes compatibility issues when it comes to different email providers and clients.

Quite simply, though the feature is baked into the state outlook application, there's a ton of issues that can break it. So, do keep that in mind when using the Outlook read receipt feature.