Crabby Office Lady

When you put all that work into writing the perfect e-mail message, it's nice to know that someone has received and read it. Outlook has a feature that can help with that, but it's a two-way street: Your recipient has to be willing to play the game too.

In my videos called, "Read receipts," I tackled the oft-questioned topic of (what else?) read receipts. In case you're not up to speed on what a read receipt is, it's a way to track when messages you send are received or read by the people you send them to.

• View "Read receipts" at 300K
• Views "Read receipts" at 100K
• View "Read receipts" at 56K

 Note    If you're having trouble watching the videos, you can try our troubleshooting tips. You can also view all my videos from the Crabby Office Lady video archive.

Look at it this way: In life, when you order a meal in a restaurant, you know that the chef has received your "message" because your food arrives a short while later (provided you've ordered off the menu and haven't angered the chef by making too many suggestions).

When it comes to e-mail, however, things aren't so black and white. How can you be sure that someone has received and actually read your message? To put it bluntly, you can make it easy, but you can't make it happen. You can set it up for your recipients to let you know if they've read your note, but it's really up to them. I'll get to that in a minute. First, let's figure out how to set up message tracking. Because if you don't do that first, they can't use it.

Message tracking: When you just have to know

You've sent out a very important message to someone. You may be a teacher who wants to know that your students got their homework assignment that you e-mailed to them. Or perhaps you're taking a survey within your company and want to be sure that everyone received and read the e-mail asking them to respond to the survey. In Outlook, you can set up a message so that each recipient has the option of notifying you that they have: (1) received the message and (2) read the message.

Outlook 2007

To be notified about a specific message

• In the message, on the Options tab, in the Tracking group, select the Request a Delivery Receipt or the Request a Read Receipt check box.

Outlook 2003 and 2002

To be notified about a specific message

1. In the message, click Options.
2. Under Voting and tracking options, select the Request a delivery receipt for this message or the Request a read receipt for this message check box. Or select both check boxes.

Outlook 2007, 2003, and 2002

To be notified about all messages

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. Click E-mail Options, and then click Tracking Options.
3. Select the Read receipt or the Delivery receipt check box. Or select both check boxes.

You've now done all you can do. But just because you've taken these steps doesn't mean it's a 100% sure thing that you'll know if and when your recipients have read your message. And why is that? I'll say it again: Because it's up to your recipients to let you know ... or not. See, while you've been reading about how to set up message tracking, they've been reading about how to change automatic response to read receipts. Your recipients have the options to send a read receipt whenever it's requested, to never send one, or to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether or not to send one.

Therefore, I strongly advise you to track only single messages of great importance. When recipients keep getting these tracked messages, they are more likely to get irritated and just say the heck with it and never send a receipt.

So, the important thing to remember is: You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.

Managing message tracking: The options

Now that you know how to set up a read receipt, there are a few other things you can do to try and stay on top of things:

• See at a glance e-mail messages with read receipts attached
  This is a great way to quickly see if an e-mail message has been sent to you requesting a read receipt.
• Automatically process requests and responses
  If you're ignoring me and sending out a lot of messages that request read receipts, this is a way to organize the massive return flow to your inbox.
• Change how you respond to requests for read receipts
  This is the place you get to decide if you want to deal with read receipt requests sent to you on a case-by-case basis, or automatically ... or not at all.

Now, see what I mean about read receipts? You can do your part to set it up so that your recipient knows you're requesting one, but it's up to her to decide if she wants you to know that she knows that you want to know if she got your message. Oh, the games people play ...

Tip of the week

V.T. in San Antonio wrote to tell me how she handles that infernal "so-and-so would like to recall the message..." Outlook feature. She says,

"Would you please explain to these folks that they really look like doofuses when they 1. send out recalls when most of their address list receives what is, in effect, a reminder notice that the sender made an error; and 2. consistently expect the recall function to routinely serve as an editor — i.e. the first person who reads the e-mail sends it back with corrections, then the sender recalls it, makes the corrections, and resends it to her mailing list! I no longer respond to a certain person's e-mail errors until at least four hours after she sends them. Let her proofread and edit her own e-mail!"

You tell 'em sister! People, truly: The "recall a message" feature is kind of persnickety. Some people love it, some hate it. For more information about it, read Recall or replace a message after it is sent.

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." — Carl Jung

About the author

Annik Stahl, the Crabby Office Lady columnist, takes all of your complaints, compliments, and knee-jerk reactions to heart. Therefore, she graciously asks that you let her know whether this column was useful to you — or not — by entering your feedback using the Was this information helpful? tool below. And remember: If you don't vote, you can't complain.

Remember: Send Crabby your Office tips at crabby@microsoft.com!