Read Receipt responses in Outlook Windows / Mac

Here’s how to control what Outlook does when it gets a Read Receipt request with an incoming email.

The setting is at File | Options | Mail | Tracking, just below where you set the options for outgoing Read Receipts.

That’s Outlook for Windows, see below about Outlook for Mac.

The choices are:

• Always send a read receipt
• Never send a read receipt
• Ask each time whether to send a read receipt

The last is the default and most commonly used option.

When you mark an incoming message as ‘Read’ and there’s a Read Receipt request, you’ll see this popup.

Yes will send the read receipt

No won’t send the read receipt.

Checking “Don’t ask me about sending receipts again” will change the global setting to “Never send a read receipt”.

Outlook for Mac

We can’t find any matching global setting in Outlook 2016 for Mac.  There’s no global option we can find for Read Receipt responses.

However, the first time you get a Read Receipt request, the same pop-up appears as in Outlook for Windows.

Checking “Don’t ask me about sending receipts again” will change the global setting to not sending Read Receipts.

Seemingly, you can turn Read Receipts responses totally off but no way to reverse that.  This seems a strange omission, making us wonder if we’ve overlooked some Read Receipt settings in Outlook 2016 for Mac.  Please let us know if you have more info.