If you want to use read receipts in Microsoft Outlook to know when your messages have been read, you have two setting options. You can either make the read receipt the default, which automatically requests it for all e-mails sent, or you can send only selected messages with a read receipt.
The latter is particularly useful if you regularly send e-mails to certain people (friends, colleagues, business partners, etc.). In this case, asking repeatedly whether people have received an e-mail, if they have not yet responded, can be irritating for you and the other person. In the following instructions for the desktop versions Outlook 2016 and 2013 as well as the web app Outlook Web, you will therefore learn both how to set up read receipts for your entire message traffic and how to use receipts only in selected e-mails.