When I used Outlook at work you could set up a delivered receipt or a read receipt or both on an email. Never tried it with anything else.

Martin C

It's a standard email feature, but how it's set up depends on the email client you are using (or webmail if you use that). Do you use your browser for email (in which case it's webmail) or something like Outlook or Thunderbird?

The email opener tends to get an option box when they open the email

"send opening notification to email originator? yes/no"

Only if your system is set-up to ask for it and the receiver's system is set-up to respond.

The feature is more likely to be activated on a corporate email system than a public one. For solid security and privacy reasons most public email users don't want senders to know their email has been read. Private systems often do want to know when emails have been read, but even with them the facility is used lightly because it generates showers of acknowledgements. Rather funny when someone sends an email to an entire organisation and then has his Inbox stuffed with 100,000 read acknowledgements. So the feature is OFF by default, and only switched ON when someone decides the overhead is worth it.

Not usually possible (as far I know) for users who read and write emails via a web-browser to control advanced email features. Full throttle email clients like Thunderbird or Outlook are more capable, but the real control is exercised by back-room email administrators. They typically apply their employer's policy, which means you probably can't just ring up and have it switched on.

Dave

Most modern companies get around it by using targeted HTML

If you open up a html part in your email it triggers their server end for a response

My email is set to text only