Outlook – How to automatically mark new mail as read in 2 of 3 inboxes in Outlook

You can set up new mail alerts utilizing the New Item Alert window. This window is a bit heavier weight than the Desktop Alert that flashes on the bottom right of your Desktop by default. It will maintain a list of received emails since the last time you dismissed the dialog, and the list is clickable so you can jump to the messages you want to read quickly.

You can create this rule by going to Tools/Rules and Alerts. Select New Rule... and follow the path that will allow you to show the New Item Alert 'after the message arrives' with no conditions or exceptions (there will be a click through asking if you really want to apply this to all messages). Unfortunately, there is no condition to apply this only when the app is minimized.

Though this solution does not fulfil the goal of not marking messages read until you read them, it will solve the issue of not being alerted to new messages while your Outlook is minimized.

• It is a very bad practive to track something by read/unread status. Consider using flags, categories or even folders for that.
• You can maintain per-user read/unread message state by using Public Folders. But this is a deprecated method.