When you have hundreds of e-mails to go through in any given day, it can be difficult to keep track of them all. Going through them in the morning before having your coffee you may miss one or two that you thought were read. Here is a quick tip to show if the message has been read or not from the Reading Pane.

Open Outlook go to Tools \ Options and click the Other tab and click the Reading Pane button.

Next, check the box "Mark items as read when…." and then place the amount of time of your choosing before a message is marked as read. When you're finished click OK.

This really comes in handy if you're multi-tasking!  Works for Outlook 2003 also.