Outlook 2010 has several options for reading a message without opening it but it could be better.
Down on the bottom right corner of Outlook 2010 are some controls for reading messages in the reading pane. The Reading Pane is the newer name for what most of us call the preview pane. It’s now the primary way people use to read messages.
Most prominent is the Zoom slider.
This defaults to 100% zoom but can be adjusted either way to increase or decrease the size of text and images in a message.
For people who have trouble reading smaller text, slide to the right to make the message text bigger.
If the message arrives with oversized text, slide the zoom to the left.
The center 100% setting is a little ‘sticky’ as you slide across so it’s easy to move the slider and land on 100%. There’s no messing around to adjust from 99% or 101% as you do with sliders in other programs.
To the left of the slider are some other reading options.
The buttons to the left of the slider are less useful in practice due to some shortcomings in the design.
The ‘book’ icon expands the reading pane. The folder view is compressed and To Do list appears as strip on the right to make room for a wider reading pane.
The icon next to that set Microsoft’s default view with the folder view and To Do list displayed.
Microsoft’s choice – not yours
Neither button works the way it should. A properly designed option would have noted the customers view selections, most notably the To Do pane (Normal, Minimized or Off) and use those choices. Instead the programming was, dare we say it, lazy.
Many Outlook users turn off the To Do bar to make room on the screen, only to have it appear again (unwanted) when they use either of the reading pane buttons on the status bar.
In Contacts view it’s the same problem – the status bar buttons switch to fixed views which don’t take into account the users preferences.
When viewing the calendar the status bar icons give you some viewing options (Normal, Calendar and Tasks, Calendar only and Classic).
Maybe it was deliberate? Microsoft loves to show off new features and force them upon customers. That’s why the To Do bar appears by default in Outlook 2010. Perhaps the designers, so infatuated with the new viewing bar couldn’t conceive that users would not want it and decided to foist it upon them, regardless of their choice.
