Why do emails marked as read look “washed out”?

If you noticed that the font color for items that are marked as Read isn’t completely black, there is nothing wrong with your eyes! The color difference is more clearly visible in the example block on the right.

To make it a “true” black, you need to define an additional Conditional Formatting rule with the condition set to “Only items that are marked as read” and with the font color to black:

1. View-> button: View Settings-> button: Conditional Formatting…
2. Click: Add
3. Name the Conditional Formatting rule.
   For instance: Read e-mail
4. Click: Font… and at the bottom, make sure that the color is set to Black.
5. Click OK.
6. Click: Condition… and select the More Choices tab.
7. Enable the checkbox in front of “Only items that are” and set the condition to “Read”.
8. Make sure that the rule is listed directly below the default rules.
   (the Move Up button will be disabled then)
9. OK yourself out of the open dialogs and to return to the main Outlook window.