
Microsoft is aware of the problem but whether they will properly fix it is left to be seen. This could be time for third party reading panes to make a comeback. Where it doesn't help is with portrait orientation - I like the reading pane on the bottom so I can keep the Folder list visible but the header takes up a huge chunk of screen real estate. With the long list of messages visible onscreen, it's productive.

The reading pane works great on the right and there is plenty of room to read messages, even with the ribbon open.

The obvious solution is to use the reading pane on the right. The apps are available in the Office App Store. The App bar shown in the screenshot is available only with Exchange 2013 mailboxes. The rest is taken up by more white space. Part of the reason the header is so large is because of the reply and forwards buttons, photos are a little smaller than in Outlook 2007 and only account for half the increased height. Add attachments or the blocked external content warning, an Outlook App and the People Pane and you're lucky to see any part of the actual message when the reading pane is on the bottom. Disabling Contact photos won't help and in fact, adds about 6 pixels to the height. 75% of users keep it), when the reading pane is on the bottom, users are lucky to see a line or two of a message with the pane's height about half the height of the window. While it's not bad when the reading pane is on the right (where approx. To make matters worse, the header can't be minimized in the RTM build.

70 pixels taller than in Outlook 2010, which was taller than the header in Outlook 2007.

The second biggest complaint after Outlook 2013's lack of color, is the size of the header in the reading pane. If the header is too narrow to list the names, a people icon is displayed along with the recipient count. Click on it to see the list of recipients. When there are too many names in the To or CC fields to list them all separately, a + number is displayed. With the smaller header, the To and date fields are moved to the right of the From field. To expand or reduce the header, click on the caret in the lower right corner of the header.
