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animatedude

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 27, 2010
1,143
88
oh dear me.

BACK TO TOPIC BOYS! guys this is not a thread to talk about wether read/delivery receipts is important or not.

PLEASE help me out to find a way to to get read receipts from either Outlook 2011 for Mac or Mail, i really NEED IT.
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,541
942
PLEASE help me out to find a way to to get read receipts from either Outlook 2011 for Mac or Mail, i really NEED IT.
Did you read the thread? Your question has been answered. Read receipts are not supported in either Outlook 2011 or Mail.
 

ssmed

macrumors 6502a
Sep 28, 2009
874
413
UK
In Mail:

To generate read receipt requests for all mail messages in mail.app.

1. Quit Mail
2. Open Terminal
3. Type the following text (make sure to keep all quote marks are correct)

defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"Disposition-Notification-To"="your@address";}'

All future messages sent with Mail will now include the Disposition-Notification-To header which is the one asking for a return receipt.

To turn off this feature in the future, type the following in the Terminal:

1. Quit Mail
2. Open Terminal
3. Type the following text

defaults delete com.apple.mail UserHeaders

Despite the comments in this thread, with cooperative colleagues read receipts can be a useful tool and stop the need to send a quick 'I got your message'. Outlook 2003, 2007 and I believe 2010 (all for Windows) allow you to respond to such requests (which is basically recognising an additional user header) either all the time or on a case by case basis. Mail.app (for Mac) does not have such a facility and when important, colleagues have to ask you to reply when you have got the mail. As such replies tend to have all the text in and will be filed in the sent mail, these take space that is avoided by a tiny read receipt, but then you have a record of the acknowledgement.

You can also write user headers in Entourage to perform the same thing and this can be done on an individual email account basis. This seems to have been removed from Outlook 2011.

HTH
 

animatedude

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 27, 2010
1,143
88
To generate read receipt requests for all mail messages in mail.app.

1. Quit Mail
2. Open Terminal
3. Type the following text (make sure to keep all quote marks are correct)

defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"Disposition-Notification-To"="your@address";}'

All future messages sent with Mail will now include the Disposition-Notification-To header which is the one asking for a return receipt.

To turn off this feature in the future, type the following in the Terminal:

1. Quit Mail
2. Open Terminal
3. Type the following text

defaults delete com.apple.mail UserHeaders

Despite the comments in this thread, with cooperative colleagues read receipts can be a useful tool and stop the need to send a quick 'I got your message'. Outlook 2003, 2007 and I believe 2010 (all for Windows) allow you to respond to such requests (which is basically recognising an additional user header) either all the time or on a case by case basis. Mail.app (for Mac) does not have such a facility and when important, colleagues have to ask you to reply when you have got the mail. As such replies tend to have all the text in and will be filed in the sent mail, these take space that is avoided by a tiny read receipt, but then you have a record of the acknowledgement.

You can also write user headers in Entourage to perform the same thing and this can be done on an individual email account basis. This seems to have been removed from Outlook 2011.

HTH

FINALLY a useful reply! thanks for this...looks like i'll be switching to Mail then.you sure this doesn't work on Outlook 2011?

P.S. does the way you described generate return mails for both delivery and read emails?
 

dyn

macrumors 68030
Aug 8, 2009
2,708
388
.nl
your attitude is more than unpleasent.
Yours is ridiculous. If somebody disagrees with you that does not mean their attitude is unpleasant... Your way of responding however IS unpleasant.

not sure which planet you live on, down here on earth, most mailservers and clients I know support receipts. and I know a lot, being in the IT consulting business sine 1994.
You might want to step outside the Microsoft productline. Thunderbird is the only well known mailclient that supports receipts and only because they wanted people to migrate from Outlook/Outlook Express to Thunderbird. Mailservers do not need to support it since it is a clientside thing.

Being in IT consulting says nothing, most consultants are a-technical and talk nonsense. Some are technical and do know what they're talking about. Claims on the internet are also quite difficult to check. That makes it as pointless as read receipts :D

that being said I am not arguing whether or not those receipts are pointless. a lot of people are using them one way or another, so who are you to tell them they are pointless? it's your opinion, nothing more.
The point is, this system has been implemented to give people certainty that the recipient actually received and even read the message. Due to all sorts of technical and psychological reasons this is something that is impossible. Both people and mail aren't reliable. Things like spam filtering will deny, delete or move messages to a spam folder. That means that the recipient might not receive your message and you might not receive the recipients read receipt. It's a gamble, there is no certainty: it might work, it might not. A system that might work does not bring you certainty. Since it was intended to give the sender certainty it makes this system pointless (it doesn't do what it was designed for). That is the reason why most mailclients never implemented it. The idea itself (give certainty that something has been delivered) isn't entirely pointless though (it's in various protocols such as TCP).

Just because people are using it does not make this system less pointless. It still doesn't do what it was intended for (bringing you certainty). It's not his opinion, it's a given fact. What a lot of people here are talking about is the idea itself (which as I already stated isn't pointless).
 

gooch3265

macrumors member
Sep 14, 2011
50
8
Victoria, Australia
In a legal office we are used to having to prove "service" of paper documents upon individuals and organizations.

With emails being a quick and easy means of communication it is also very useful to be able to demonstrate that your email has at least been "delivered" to the recipient email address. Whether they then read, ignored or deleted the email is very often an irrelevancy as the onus is then on the recipient to explain their actions and/or why they didn't read it.

"Read" receipts are even more useful because they demonstrate on the balance of probabilities that someone with access to the recipient's email account did open the email.

No-one is really concerned in a legal context to demonstrate or infer anything more than the above from "delivery" or "read" receipts.

That OS X Mail and Outlook 2011 don't support these features, whereas Windows variants of Outlook do, is an oversight and black mark against the formers' usability in a modern commercial setting.
 
Last edited:

MisterMe

macrumors G4
Jul 17, 2002
10,709
69
USA
In a legal office we are used to having to prove "service" of paper documents upon individuals and organizations.

...
AUS may be different, but in the USA we have the phrase "improper service." If you don't understand it, then have your superior to explain it to you.
 

gooch3265

macrumors member
Sep 14, 2011
50
8
Victoria, Australia
AUS may be different, but in the USA we have the phrase "improper service." If you don't understand it, then have your superior to explain it to you.

So do we.

Nowhere in my post did I suggest that "read" or "delivery" receipts are routinely recognized as a means of effecting "personal service" (say of particular, legally rare, documents like a Writ or subpoena that must usually be "personally served"), although if a Court is happy to make an Order allowing for "substituted service" upon sighting a read or delivery receipt then that is a matter for it. A Court has even previously allowed an Order to be served via posting to the recipient's Facebook page (http://reface.me/news/police-court-order-facebook-video/).

Courts and Tribunals do accept as a matter of evidence that read and delivery receipts generated by Windows Outlook are sufficient proof that an email and its attachment was received by the recipient's account or read (as the case may be) by someone having access to the recipient's account.

When I "serve" a medical report, as an example, on the opposing law firm via email I want delivery and read receipts. When they say to the Court they don't have a copy it is then up to them to rebut the presumption that it was sent to them and received by them.

With OS X Mail and Outlook 2011 I don't have the basic tools to create the presumption. It's likely many of the other 4,850+ people who have read this thread want to create similar presumptions.

As a lawyer with thirteen years' experience in major tort litigation I am the superior in my office.
 

dyn

macrumors 68030
Aug 8, 2009
2,708
388
.nl
With emails being a quick and easy means of communication it is also very useful to be able to demonstrate that your email has at least been "delivered" to the recipient email address. Whether they then read, ignored or deleted the email is very often an irrelevancy as the onus is then on the recipient to explain their actions and/or why they didn't read it.
It is also very easy to demonstrate that email is not a very reliable system and thus you can not depend on it being delivered. Mostly because of all the spam and antivirus systems in place. You get the "delivered" notification but that only says it has been accepted by the mailserver. It does not mention anything about what happens after it has been filtered. It may have been deleted without the user read it. You can find this in the logs. The same logs can also be used to show that no email has been received (in case of a mitm attack for example).

"Read" receipts are even more useful because they demonstrate on the balance of probabilities that someone with access to the recipient's email account did open the email.
No it absolutely does not because clients can be setup to sent such a receipt automatically or somebody can choose not to sent it at all. You do have to have a client that actually supports it which aren't many.

No-one is really concerned in a legal context to demonstrate or infer anything more than the above from "delivery" or "read" receipts.
In most countries it is enough to show the email has been delivered. It is up to the other party to show logs of the mailserver that tells otherwise (there are countries where you have to archive all incoming email by law). However, in both cases we are talking plain text files that can be altered quite easily. It is entirely up to the judge to guess who's right, who's wrong and if the given logs can be even accepted as evidence. The same applies to chat logs and other kind of logs.

That OS X Mail and Outlook 2011 don't support these features, whereas Windows variants of Outlook do, is an oversight and black mark against the formers' usability in a modern commercial setting.
No it isn't. There is absolutely no need for such a feature because in most countries the log files are enough. In most countries you also need much more evidence than just logs and emails. You need to build up a convincing case and for that you use various sorts of evidence.

There is another problem in this case. Anybody can sent you an email and email systems can be hacked. How does the recipient know that YOU are actually the person that sent the email? They don't. For that people use certificates or pgp/gpg to sign the email with a unique signature.

A Court has even previously allowed an Order to be served via posting to the recipient's Facebook page (http://reface.me/news/police-court-o...acebook-video/).
In the Netherlands something like that will only be allowed if that is the only way of reaching that person. If it isn't than using that doesn't count. Why? Because it isn't reliable. Same goes for other digital things like email, twitter, hyves (Dutch Facebook competitor), etc. There has been 1 case where they were allowed that and it was a highly debated decision throughout lawyers and judges in the entire country.

Court orders are usually sent via snail mail and you have to sign for it. Which immediately shows the difference between read receipts and the old way: the old way uses actual unique signatures whereas the read receipts are only digital messages without any uniqueness to it. There is no way of telling that somebody knowingly sent it and who that person was (even if it was a person). Since you have to proof the other person has gotten the court order most will use the old way because it simply is the best way (the evidence is stronger). I believe this is how it works in most countries.

When I "serve" a medical report, as an example, on the opposing law firm via email I want delivery and read receipts.
I hope you sent it encrypted. In the Netherlands this is mandatory as medical records fall under the privacy law. If you sent them plain text then you'd be violating that privacy law. You definitely want to have encryption in that picture as well. Medical records are very sensitive data which can harm an individual for a life time.

With OS X Mail and Outlook 2011 I don't have the basic tools to create the presumption. It's likely many of the other 4,850+ people who have read this thread want to create similar presumptions.
As long as you are not using certificates/gpg/pgp for signing and encrypting emails it really doesn't matter what client you are using.

It is not likely that many of the other 4850+ people who read this thread want to create presumptions like you do. There is no evidence for that. The only thing there is, is the fact that 4850+ people read this thread. There is no indication why they did so nor is there anything that will tell this in the future. What you are doing here is making assumptions and those are the mother of all screw ups. From my own experience as a sysadmin I know that quite a lot of people are not known to read receipts at all. They have no idea what they are or how to use them (which means that you can't tell if something was a mistake or not). It is quite possible that a lot of people came to this thread because they wanted to know what "read receipts" are. Could be something else that drew them here. I just don't know.

As a lawyer with thirteen years' experience in major tort litigation I am the superior in my office.
Let's not forget that this site isn't USA-only. There are many nationalities here. Email is also not limited to the USA, it is used worldwide and thus manufacturers of email servers and clients have to aim at audiences around the world. If in most countries in the world there is no sense in having a certain feature it will be much easier not to implement them.
 

gooch3265

macrumors member
Sep 14, 2011
50
8
Victoria, Australia
It is also very easy to demonstrate that email is not a very reliable system and thus you can not depend on it being delivered. Mostly because of all the spam and antivirus systems in place. You get the "delivered" notification but that only says it has been accepted by the mailserver. It does not mention anything about what happens after it has been filtered. It may have been deleted without the user read it. You can find this in the logs. The same logs can also be used to show that no email has been received (in case of a mitm attack for example).

Why isn't acceptance by the mail server good enough? If the recipient doesn't have proper policies in place for checking its spam, or its systems don't effectively relay the information in a timely fashion, that is the recipient's problem. It's like the analogy of effecting service of a document by leaving the document with someone over the age of sixteen at the recipient's workplace (valid here anyway) - if the employee doesn't pass the document to the employer recipient that's the employer's problem. The mail server stands in the same place as the employee: there's an expectation the employee will have been trained to know what to do, or will make simple enquiries. Wilful blindness is not a valid excuse, nor is an aggressive spam filter set to repel emails from all unknown sources that is never checked (as an example).

No it absolutely does not because clients can be setup to sent such a receipt automatically or somebody can choose not to sent it at all. You do have to have a client that actually supports it which aren't many.

Again - that's the recipient's problem. Secondly, are you saying that Outlook 2003 and 2007 for Windows (which do support it) aren't commonplace installations?

In most countries it is enough to show the email has been delivered. It is up to the other party to show logs of the mailserver that tells otherwise (there are countries where you have to archive all incoming email by law). However, in both cases we are talking plain text files that can be altered quite easily. It is entirely up to the judge to guess who's right, who's wrong and if the given logs can be even accepted as evidence. The same applies to chat logs and other kind of logs.

The logs are certainly relevant (and can be very definitive, even, when the questions are put to the test in Court) but send and receipts provide entirely adequate proof to establish the presumption that the document was received or read by someone with access to the recipient's account. Let's not forget about the millions of emails sent each day from law firms (or any other business wanting some degree of certainty about these matters) that don't require proof of effective "personal service". My example of a simple emailing sending some medical reports as an attachment is but one.

No it isn't. There is absolutely no need for such a feature because in most countries the log files are enough. In most countries you also need much more evidence than just logs and emails. You need to build up a convincing case and for that you use various sorts of evidence.

Obviously what the recipient then does after the email is alleged to have been received and/or read is relevant if it is in serious doubt (after send, read receipts and logs have been considered), but at the end of the day we are talking about what is often a legal non-issue (receipt and the reading of an email). The OP and I just want read and send receipts utilised in OS X Mail and Outlook 2012 FFS. Not everyone wants to read and understand message headers and logs.

There is another problem in this case. Anybody can sent you an email and email systems can be hacked. How does the recipient know that YOU are actually the person that sent the email? They don't. For that people use certificates or pgp/gpg to sign the email with a unique signature.

As a matter of evidence you the sender know you sent it and you can prove it. Your example seems to me to be an excuse that a recipient might give to evade service. "I didn't know that email was really from the person who it purported to be from so I ignored it" shouldn't be a valid excuse.

In the Netherlands something like that will only be allowed if that is the only way of reaching that person. If it isn't than using that doesn't count.

Same here. The exception here the law allows is called substituted service, and it is permitted when the recipient is evading service or cannot be found.

Why? Because it isn't reliable. Same goes for other digital things like email, twitter, hyves (Dutch Facebook competitor), etc. There has been 1 case where they were allowed that and it was a highly debated decision throughout lawyers and judges in the entire country.

It's not reliable because it is difficult to prove that the person has actually had notice of the communication. But in such cases the law has pushed the burden onto the intended recipient for good reason, often because they have been evading service, won't attend Court, and have been known to "frequent that address".

Court orders are usually sent via snail mail and you have to sign for it. Which immediately shows the difference between read receipts and the old way: the old way uses actual unique signatures whereas the read receipts are only digital messages without any uniqueness to it. There is no way of telling that somebody knowingly sent it and who that person was (even if it was a person). Since you have to proof the other person has gotten the court order most will use the old way because it simply is the best way (the evidence is stronger). I believe this is how it works in most countries.

Same here, but see my comments above re evading service. Also, the recipient does not have to sign for a document for it to be proven as "served". Documents are often served upon people by leaving it on the ground in their presence, leaving it with someone else residing at the same address or with an employee at the same workplace, or upon people who flat out will not cooperate. All of these situations make signatures (unique or otherwise) irrelevant, and the law permits service in those circumstances. The internet shouldn't be any different, and the fortification of existing standards (rather than the erosion of them) should occur IMHO.


I hope you sent it encrypted. In the Netherlands this is mandatory as medical records fall under the privacy law. If you sent them plain text then you'd be violating that privacy law. You definitely want to have encryption in that picture as well. Medical records are very sensitive data which can harm an individual for a life time.

Not illegal here to not encrypt. I agree it is a good idea to do so.

It is not likely that many of the other 4850+ people who read this thread want to create presumptions like you do. There is no evidence for that. The only thing there is, is the fact that 4850+ people read this thread. There is no indication why they did so nor is there anything that will tell this in the future. What you are doing here is making assumptions and those are the mother of all screw ups. From my own experience as a sysadmin I know that quite a lot of people are not known to read receipts at all. They have no idea what they are or how to use them (which means that you can't tell if something was a mistake or not). It is quite possible that a lot of people came to this thread because they wanted to know what "read receipts" are. Could be something else that drew them here. I just don't know.

How is *not* likely that "many" do? What's the thread topic again? :) By the way, try googling the subject. The people wanting the facility seem to far outweigh those who do not.


Let's not forget that this site isn't USA-only. There are many nationalities here. Email is also not limited to the USA, it is used worldwide and thus manufacturers of email servers and clients have to aim at audiences around the world. If in most countries in the world there is no sense in having a certain feature it will be much easier not to implement them.

See my comments about Outlook 2003 and 2007 above, although that wasn't why I said what I said. The quote you have taken from my post was originally directed at MisterMe, who was unnecessarily rude and arrogant.

Bottom line is that Outlook 2011 and OS X Mail are lacking a basic feature that is no doubt used by *many* users around the world who also might happen to use Outlook 2003 and 2007. Different application I know, but why would Apple implement delivery receipts in Messages in OS X Mountain Lion, but not see fit to do so for its flagship email product? Answer probably is that it can control the standards on Messages, but why wouldn't you adopt what is already out there with OS X Mail (same goes for Microsoft and Outlook 2011).

PS - I'm not a Windows fanboi or a troll - just someone who misses a feature I use every day in my work, which feature would also allow me to use the Outlook 2011 and/or OS X Mail/Calendar suites at work instead of their Windows counterparts.
 

MarkBsp

macrumors newbie
Mar 19, 2013
1
0
Solution (or a possible one at least)

A year or so ago, I upgraded my version of office on my mac which included migrating from Entourage to Outlook 2011.

In Entourage, I had resolved the read receipts issue by amending the header as follows:

In Entourage, select "Tools." Then select "Accounts."

Select the "Mail" tab. Select the account for which you wish to use read receipts by double-clicking on the account name.

Select the "Options" tab.

In the box labeled "Header," type "Disposition-Notification-To." Then type your email address into the "Value" box. Click "OK." Your Entourage program has now been set up to request read receipts.


When I upgraded to Outlook, I chose to migrate old accounts and the read receipt capability continued to work - voila!!

Its a bit of a long way round but it works. If anyone can see what has changed in outlook (blowed if I can) then that may point the way to an easier solution)

The trouble now is that I don't know how to turn it off!! :)

Regarding earlier posts about it being useless, I would comment as follows:

I understand that there are many ways that an email can be 'not read', however, this isn't the purpose of the functionality (ie one doesnt want to prove the negative). I also understand that some people refuse to send read receipts. However, if I do receive a read receipt then I know one thing for sure - it has been opened and, as indicated earlier, that is often all I am interested to know.
 
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