Reading Pane or Preview Panel is Gone in Outlook 2010

When you use Outlook 2010 throughout most of your workday, you start to get used to the way it appears whenever you open the program window.

So if an error, update or reinstallation occurs and it does not look the same anymore, you may be curious about how to restore it to the view to which you are accustomed.

Fortunately, there is a specific tab in Outlook 2010 that contains the settings that you need to manipulate. So if your reading pane or preview panel is gone in Outlook 2010, it is possible to get it back without much hassle.

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Display the Reading Pane in Outlook 2010

The reading pane in Outlook 2010 is the one that shows a preview of the message that is currently selected in your message list.

This feature is very useful for being able to view as much information about your messages as possible.

So when that panel is gone, you need to double-click each message in order to view its’ contents. This can be tedious if you receive a lot of messages throughout the day, so restoring the reading panel is crucial to your productivity.

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Step 1: Launch Outlook 2010.

Step 2: Click the View tab at the top of the window.

click view tab in outlook 2010

Step 3: Click the Reading Pane drop-down menu in the Layout section of the ribbon at the top of the window, then click the Right or Bottom option, depending upon your own display preferences.

reading pane or preview panel is gone in outlook 2010

You will note that there are also a couple of other pane display options in this section that you can enable or disable in order to further customize your Outlook installation.

Do you want to know how to quickly mark all of the messages in your Outlook 2010 inbox as “read”? Follow these instructions to reduce the number of new messages that Outlook says you have to zero.

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