Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual

Reading Email

There are two ways to read a message: using the Reading pane, and opening the message into its own window.

When you click a message’s name in the List pane, the body of the message appears in the Reading pane below or to the right. Don’t forget that you can adjust the relative sizes of the List and Preview panes by dragging the border between them up or down.

UP TO SPEED: Selecting Messages

In order to process a group of messages simultaneously—to delete, move, or forward them, for example—you must first master the art of multiple message selection.

To select two or more messages that appear consecutively in your message list, click the first message, and then Shift-click the last. Known as a contiguous selection, this trick selects the two messages you clicked and every message between them.

To select two or more messages that aren’t adjacent in the list (that is, skipping a few messages between selected ones), Ctrl-click the messages you want. Only the messages you click get selected—no filling in of messages in between this time.

After using either technique, you can also deselect messages you’ve managed to highlight—just Ctrl-click them again.

To open a message into a window of its own, double-click its name in the List pane. An open message has its own Ribbon, along with Previous and Next buttons.

Once you’ve read a message, you can view the next one in the list either by pressing Ctrl+ (next message), by pressing Ctrl+U (next unread message), or by clicking its name ...