Hello,

is it possible to minimize/remove/change to something else the pane marker in red square in the picture? There are replay buttorns and e-mail header, it covers to much my preciuous screen space : )

No, this is not possible. Placing your Reading Pane on the right might be more efficient when it comes to reading the messa

So you are saying that it was someone's bright idea to waste an inch of the reading pane to force you to see a picture of the person sending the email even if no picture exists. In the reading pane the is especially silly as almost all of the header information is visible in the message preview. I would prefer the option of viewing only the message body in the reading pane.

I created my account to join you in asking to provide capability to remove or minimize the message header which eats so much space on my HD+ screen that I was forced to switch the reading pane to the right (I was always having it in the bottom).

Microsoft, please re-consider user experience, when thinking on modern design.

Is it not lucky that Microsoft has provided the new smily feedback icon so everyone can instantly provide their opinion of the new feature. It is a shame that you can disable this and other new features with registry hacks but not the useless header information format. Is this something that is set on the server side maybe?

I found a post on the Office forum that explains part of this situation.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-outlook/remove-the-message-header-in-the-reading-pane/e3ce2ddf-6463-45ae-b8bb-ff8ff38aa2ff

It explains why it cant be turned off but not why someone thought it a good idea to make the situation worse.

Usability reduced. And now I'm forced to open reading pane on right side even on my fullHD display. 

I prefer reading pane at bottom, I prefer windows taskbar at right side (for win8 it is not usable due to charms bar, a bit offtopic, yep)... but nobel MS designers prefer just cut off functionality which they don't use themselves. 

I TRIED to use the reading pane on the right on mine work laptop (14" 16,9), it is not a solution.

Professional emails often contain tables, formatted and indented texts, some times also graphs that make the "right side option" completely useless.

Also consider that in a work environment emails have very often lot of people in CC and  attachments other elements that contribute to grow the header dimension (sometimes up to an incredible huge area) eating up screen space.

I shrank all ribbons, disabled the users pane, hidden the taskbar, still there is not enough space left to read any emails without scrolling (awfully having only 5 to 10 lines left visible) or open it (messing up the screen and time consuming task).  

I cannot either come back to Outlook 2007 since it's a company pc !!!!! Please get back to us users the option to hide the message header, shouldn't be such a dififcult tweak.

I also find this large header pane frustrating.  Often the subject line is containing a lot of text and I want to read it in the "table view" without selecting the message.  So the reading pane on the right is not a solution.

And I really don't need the line at the top of the header with Reply / Reply to all / Transfer.

So many not usefull things can be personalized, so why not this?

This will give some relief. 

If you don't want to display photo when viewing an Email item in Outlook 2013, please refer to the steps below:

1. Click "File", and then click "Options".
2. Navigate to "People".
3. Uncheck "Show user photographs when available" under "Online status and photographs".

• Proposed as answer by CharlieSpencer Wednesday, March 19, 2014 2:22 PM

I just found this thread about the monster header in Outlook 2013 emails. I'm very disappointed to read the "use the right pane" solution to this. That header is too big - right, left or bottom! There's little of value in it. As a developer it surprises me that so much screen space can be wasted for so little benefit.

I know that Microsoft doesn't care. That big strip of nothing had to have been criticized internally before it was released. There had to be some sane and practical voices at Microsoft that were ignored. I must use Office. At least I think I do. But I won't use Outlook. I have 12 email accounts to monitor for my businesses and blogs. I have no idea who Outlook might work for but it certainly does not work for me. 

And remember to close Outlook and restart to see the generic icon has been removed.

• Proposed as answer by CharlieSpencer Wednesday, March 19, 2014 2:22 PM

Unbelievable...

Thank you,

It certainly helps not having a generic empty square staring at me on every email.

Now if we can just figure out where they hide the CSS template and re-write it to reduce the wasted space, cause obviously Microsoft will not do anything about it.

And no, MS, we will not spend on 33" 4K monitor for emails...  We have PCs with 3 of those for financial team working excel.  ;-)

Ps. can I edit my name below to remove the entry about partners, I feel shame right now...

• Edited by Marc Cote Mathieu Thursday, February 13, 2014 3:50 PM shame...

Now if we can just figure out where they hide the CSS template and re-write it to reduce the wasted space, cause obviously Microsoft will not do anything about it.

And no, MS, we will not spend on 33" 4K monitor for emails...  We have PCs with 3 of those for financial team working excel.  ;-)

About 4 months ago, Microsoft released an update which included the option to minimize the message header.
See: Minimizing the message header in Outlook 2013

The update is applicable for reading pane only. When you open the email on a separate window, there is a big chunk of space taken up by Archive date, Sender, Subject, To, Cc. All these 6 lines are so badly arranged. Please allow user to customise this area.

I completely agree.  Having this same Compact option for separate window is needed.  The header now is MUCH too large... first thing I saw and hated when starting to use Outlook 2013.