Highlight Color of Selected Message in Outlook for Mac

Anonymous
2023-09-11T15:46:07+00:00

I have my Outlook for Mac inbox setup with the list of emails on the left and the reading pane on the right.  When scrolling through the list of messages in the list on the left, in my inbox as well as messages stored in other folders, it is very difficult for me to tell which email is selected in the list.  Many years ago, when a message was selected in the list it was highlighted in a deep blue color… Now it’s a very faint light blue color that is really hard for me to see (yes I do have some vision issues... but it's also so faint I have to imagine others have the same issue).  

As a result, I frequently delete the wrong email etc. because I can't tell what is actually highlighted.  Is there a way to change the default color of a highlighted message in the list, to make it easier to tell which message is highlighted?  I tried messing around with the overall theme in the settings, and while the red theme made it a bit better I sort of hate the look of the other themes... so is there a way to only change of the highlighted message? If not, do you have any recommendations on how to avoid these mistakes?

Thanks for your help

Outlook | MacOS | Legacy Outlook for Mac | For business

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-02-05T21:54:36+00:00

    I found this problem with the "new" outlook, so I just switched back to "legacy" outlook. Problem solved. (Still could be a darker blue for the selected message, but compared to the new outlook it works. The new outlook did not appear to have any selection indicator color at all, except in "dark" mode. But who wants to read white lettering on a black background all day? Not me.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-01-21T15:35:16+00:00

    I agree. I have the same problem as it is impossible to see when I use the shift key to select multiple messages it really looks like I just selected the last message selected. Even if we do not get an option to change the color, the developers should change the fixed color back to what it was before this "enhanced" version.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-01-15T15:09:54+00:00

    Everyone, upvote and post your feedback about selected message highlight color here if you want to see this changed. Complaining here will do nothing, clearly. There are actually multiple open feedback requests for this same thing, so it's important you use the same one to get it to rise to the top. There is also another one to upvote and optionally comment on here. The most important thing is the upvotes, upvote both, the more upvotes, more likely Miscrosoft will no longer ignore.

    Let's finally get Microsoft to do something about this, send to your coworkers, orgs etc! They need to upvote these and respond.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-03-08T18:15:00+00:00

    I just posted a similar question before seeing this thread. Yeah, what a stupid "upgrade" from previous versions where it was very clear which row was highlighted.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-02-16T12:44:47+00:00

    Thank you, I’ll try that

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