When I open Outlook, it selects the first unread or read mail in inbox. But the selected mail is the most recent.
I want to read the Unreads from bottom to top. When I change the selection to the oldest unread mail, the top unread mail is being read. It's annoying.
I want to read that, later. But, the first mail becomes always read.
Even though this is an old thread, I just found it because I had a very similar request as the original poster. My solution is (as hinted by another answer) to collapse the group headers by default. When the headers are collapsed, Outlook opens with nothing selected or active in the preview pane. It's not perfect, especially if you don't want to use Groups, but it works for me.
To enable, go to View -> View Settings -> Group By -> and select "All Collapsed" under Expand/collapse defaults.
The best workaround I have found for Outlook 2013 is to configure the Reading Pane like this:
This gives you 5 seconds to select a different e-mail before the first e-mail is marked as read.
Outlook for Web Access actually has a setting to not select the first e-mail when opening a mailbox, but this feature is not available to Outlook desktop client:
That's one of the perils of using the Reading Pane. Try this: go to Tools > Options > Other > Reading Pane and disable Mark items as read when selection changes.
I assume the list is sorted with newest mails on top -- if you change the sort order to oldest first, will it then select the first (oldest) mail instead? Then your problem would be solved.
You can make this happen by collapsing the emails. Like if you are sorting by date, just collapse "Today" and that should do it
