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Windows Live Mail

Stop Marking Displayed Messages As Read So Fast - Or At All

SUMMARY: Windows Live Mail marks a message as read when previewed for one second - change this behavior.

By default, Windows Live Mail will mark a message such as e-mail or an RSS item as read (graying it out) after you have displayed it for only one second. This basically assumes that every message you display, you want marked as read.

Some people would rather have Windows Live Mail wait a few more seconds before marking the message as read, and others would rather completely disable this 'feature'. To change the default behavior:

1. Access the Windows Live Mail menu by clicking the menu button (see the screenshot to the right) or press Alt + M.

2. Select "Options".

3. The "Options" multi-tabbed dialog box appears. Select the "Read" tab.

4. Next to "Mark message read after displaying or", enter a value from 1 - 60 seconds. Or uncheck this box to completely disable this feature.

Configuring Windows Live Mail to not mark displayed messages as read

5. Click "OK" to close the dialog box.

EXPERT USERS: The Registry Entry for this configuration item can be found here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\mail\MarkPreviewAsRead

1-60 - Enabled for 1-60 seconds
4294967295 (ffffffff Hexadecimal) - Disabled

This tip was written for Windows Live Mail Version 2009 running on a netbook running Windows XP Home. Features, instructions, and screenshots for other versions / operating systems may vary.