Selecting mail in Outlook results in playing whack-a-mole

Question

My work e-mail account gets a lot of email every day. Many of these emails are sent from automated systems. My problem is that often when I am trying double-click an email to open/read it, Outlook shifts all the mail downward in my window when a new email arrives, resulting in my double-clicking an incorrect email. Sometimes two or three times.

Is there a way of getting Outlook to not shift the mail displayed when new mail comes in? It only shifts mail in this way when it scrolled all the way at the top of my (newest) mail; it doesn't do this when I am scrolled down looking at older email.

As an alternative, is there some way of making Outlook not update instantaneously whenever it gets new mail? If it only added new mail once a minute or so I would have the rest of the minute to select mail without the mail moving around.

I am using Outlook 365 (client, not browser based) over Windows 7.

Answer 1

You have a couple of options here:

Work offline Go to send / receive in your menu bar and click Work Offline. This will stop new emails coming in and allow you to answer them all before putting yourself back online.

Set Up Rules If you are getting a lot of out of office or automatic replies, you can set up rules to move them directly to a different folder or even your trash bin. Home on the menu bar => Rules => Set up new rule You can then choose how you want to do things (subject contains "out of office" or whatever) and let them be less of a nuisance.

Use Cursor Keys Navigate to the mail using the cursor keys and press Enter to open it instead of randomly clicking.

There used to be a way to only check for mails at certain intervals (giving you time to deal with mails in between) but with always on connections and Exchange servers I'm not sure this is available any more.