How to Disable single click to open email in New Outlook?

I reiterate the comments made by others.

We've had 25 years of muscle memory in Outlook and File Explorer where single click is "select" and double-click is "use". Why is it so hard to copy the established design philosophy?

This is disheartening that this thread was opened on 2/18/24 and it is now Sept and nothing has been done to update this issue. My workaround is to right click on the email that I want highlighted and then either execute one of the choices in the fly out or just click somewhere else on the page to keep it highlighted (2 clicks for a single click function). Disappointing that there must not have been any QA testing done on this before they rolled it out. Not everyone uses the Reading Panes. I actually can't stand them. Stop taking away functionality that is useful.

I have the same issue. Regarding the "why would you want this different", here are a few of my thoughts.

1. Single click does not open an item in most other OS applications (Windows, OSX, Linux, etc.). Single click typically selects an item.
2. Often I single click to deselect another email so that the conversation view collapses and I can see more of my messages.
3. In addition to #2, I sometimes single click an email so I can see the conversation. This way I get a quick view of the first line of each email so that I can see the topics and quickly select the appropriate email. If an entire email opens when I single click it, it defeats the ability to quickly scan the messages in the conversation.

I just found this issue too (now moved to using the web based mail only).

My conclusion so far until they fix it, instead of single click, right click and go direct to the options I was probably after anyway.

I single click because I want to delete/Mark Read something without reading, and found these options are immediately availavle in the right click menu