![Diane Poremsky [Outlook MVP]](http://www.outlook-tips.net/images/2014/MVP_BlueOnly.png)
It happened to all of us at least once or twice: we accidently mark all messages as read, rather than just one. Unfortunately there isn't an 'undo' command. The Modified date field is not affected either, so it’s mostly impossible to know which messages were marked read.
You can sort by the icon column and mark all opened (but not forwarded or replied) messages as unread. This will sort all Forwards and Replies (and other non-message items, like meeting requests and read receipts) together at the top or bottom of the message list.
Select the rest of the messages (select one message then hold Shift and scroll to the last message then click) and Mark as Unread. You'll end up with a lot of messages you're done with now marked unread but it's as easy as pressing Ctrl+Q to mark them read again.
If you accidently mark messages read very often, try using Ctrl+Q instead of the mouse to mark messages read. Or get in the habit of marking them completed instead (click twice on the flag field). This changes the Modified date and sets the Completed flag, making it easy to identify the items you’re done working with.
Published December 3, 2008. Last updated on August 26, 2013.
make use of the slow indexing of the outlook items. search unread items. select all and mark them unread.
search results will include the read item which are done just now.
It IS useless in fact for a remedy to THIS problem (may be handy for other purposes). I can suggest to those who suffered (although far from a perfect solution, this may be a partial solution for some), if they have a mobile phone or other device where they also use Outlook and recently checked their email, to make that second device offline first (important), then open Outlook there, and mark the files as "unread" or "read" in the first device by checking from the list in the second device.
If using over-the-air sync, you need to turn off sync immediately (using airplane mode), before the phone has a chance to sync the changes.
This is a stupid approach. The option to "mark all as read" is useless. Microsoft should eliminate this option or create an undo function. This causes all sorts of havoc in an otherwise very useful system. This happens because sometimes mouses bounce (I don't know why). Microsoft, as the professionals who are aware of this, should correct this problem.
It's not useless - it can be handy to mark all messages read. But "accidents" can happen too easily and adding an "are you sure" dialog gets annoying.
No - disagree with that - an 'are you sure option' would DEFINITELY be a good idea when you are marking all as read (though not for a single or selection of emails)
"Don't show this dialog again" would be fine. I had a similar issue with accidentally flagging everything. If they don't fix this, they need to create an Undo option that persists across app loads (at least for a day)
I don't think an persistent undo would be workable and would likely be limited to like the last nn changes. They could keep a change log, although it could get huge fast and fall out of favor quickly.