Outlook - can one determine WHEN an email was opened (without read receipt switched on)

Copper Contributor

Is there a way to retrospectively track (say at the admin level or any other way) WHEN a particular user has opened a particular email in Outlook? In this instance, the sender did not switch on the "read receipt" functionality.
I see there are message trace options but it appears they only record if an email was delivered, failed, filtered as spam, etc as opposed to actually when the email was opened.

I found a mention of something called "eDiscovery" - in my brief reading I am still unsure if it can do what I am wanting. Any thoughts?

4 Replies
Advanced audit has the MailItemAccessed event, which can help you here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/advanced-audit?view=o365-worldwide#mailite...
Without this, you can only tell whether a message was read, not when.

Hi @Vasil Michev thanks for the reply on this. Is this functionality only available at the Outlook Admin level or can any user do this on their own mailbox? Context is I was asked by a manager if it was possible. I am just a standard end user with no admin access.

 

That's admin level. And will only apply to users internal to your organization, forgot to mention that. As an end user, the best you can do is toggle a read receipt and hope the recipient honors it.