If you use outlook, you may have noticed that there is no default way to permanently and unilaterally change the zoom (font size) in the reading pane. If you click on a message, it will be defaulted to 100% every time. This can cause obvious problems if you like a high resolution screen for some reasons, but have trouble reading small text.
I've found a few solutions, but they are not optimal:
- Change DPI on the monitor – This is bad because it affects everything else on your computer too. In my personal case, all my desktop icons get bigger and arrange in a way that doesn't work for me.
- Purchase a third party add-on – It's not expensive, but it's very stupid that I should have to purchase anything for what should be a default accessibility feature.
- Hold control and use the scroll wheel – This works great … if only it could be permanently set for all messages.
I don't know much about macros, but I understand programming just enough to get by, and I understand that you can do some pretty powerful things with them. It certainly seems that outlook supports them in a similar use case. And this post might be helpful if I understood what it said in the first place.
So a macro is a doable option, assuming it can autorun on startup.
A free add-on would be fine too. Or plug-in or whatever else might work.
Best Answer
Reading pane text size is determined by the sender in the same way web page design and layout is determined by the creator of the web page.
Size and format of text is set by the email sender and coded into the email by HTML.
The only way to permanently adjust the size of the text in the reading pane is to adjust the display scaling or zooming the reading pane.
There is no way to set a permanent zoom level in the Outlook reading pane.