Outlook Message Preview – changing the number of lines to show

If you don’t use the Preview Pane to show an email when you have it highlighted, you likely rely on the Message Preview in the Inbox folder to get some idea as to what the message might be about. If you don’t know, you can change the length of that preview from one to three lines. Here’s how to do it…

In my example here, I can see that I have my Message Preview turned off by selecting View > Message Preview:

To change my Inbox view to show at least one line of my message, I select Message Preview > One Line:

I get asked if I want to make the change in just this folder, or across the board:

Now, I see the first line of my message in the Inbox:

If I need to see more, I can select up to three lines:

I personally use the Message Preview pane, so I don’t have anything except for the bare minimum showing in my inbox. However, if I were working solely on my (small-screened) laptop, I would want to use this feature to see more of my messages without all the space being used in the preview pane.