Outlook 2007 telling my host when messages have been read

Hoping this is the right forum to post this in. If not, a lead toward the right place would be appreciated.

When i'm home, I read my mail on Outlook 2007 on my Win7 computer and all is well. When I am not home, though, I log on directly to my web hosting company's interface (called CPX) and read my email there. About three months ago, I noticed that almost everything I was reading on CPX was getting marked as read before I read it. We test it all kinds of ways and were baffled. Well, I finally found a key bit of info. When my home computer had Outlook off (which it rarely is), suddenly CPX worked great. As soon as I turned on Outlook, though, all my email on CPX started getting marked as read...even spam that I hadn't read at all on Outlook.

So, it seems, something in my Outlook 2007 is telling my host now that email is read simply by its being downloaded into Outlook. This is very frustrating when I'm out for the day, using CPX a lot, and can't tell what I've read.

What would I have to change in Outlook to say, "Stop telling my host that this email has been read!" Strange that this didn't happen for many years and then suddenly started to.

Thanks!

Your question could be taken two ways.

If you mean, "Have I made any changes lately that could have caused this?" then the answer is, "No, I haven't changed anything about those settings in years."

If you mean, "Have I looked through 'Options' and "Customize' and "Account Settings' trying to find anything that sounds like 'Notify host that email has been read', then "Yes, I've looked around quite a bit and can't find anything that sounds close to what's happening."

Regarding the link that you included (with my thanks), my settings match the recommendations on that screen (other than the fact that I use 2 seconds instead of 5). And again, I haven't touched that screen -- wasn't even all that quick to get to so I couldn't have gone there by mistake! ;-)

Still needing direction on this. Thanks!

i've looked at a lot of the options there, and none of them sound like they'd have anything to do with what's happening.
As for the webhost reader, called CPX, I've been in touch with their tech team and even the engineers behind them. No one can explain it on their end (nor is it happening to their other customers) so they're blaming my Outlook. They even suggested I download Thunderbird to test if it happens there too...but that's a huge endeavor.

Is the account setup in outlook as IMAP or POP3? I'm guessing that the client is telling the server to mark mail as read when it retrieves mail from the server. Thus when you close the client, in this case outlook, the web client acts as you expect.

as you can see in the attachment, it's POP3, as it's been for many years. So there's been no change there.

You say "I'm guessing that the client is telling the server to mark mail as read when it retrieves mail from the server," but in ten years of this set-up, the client (Outlook) has never told the server this before. So if Outlook is the one telling the server this (as my host accuses), again, where in Outlook does one say "Don't tell the server that!"?

Thanks Tommy.

When did this behavior start?
If you ask me, there are 2 explanations:
A) Your mail host flags the mails as read as soon as a client (outlook for you) retrieves them
B) Your mail client is asking your mail host to mark them as read once retrieved

We can actually test this...
Would you be able to download another mail client?
You do not need to install it, just run it. I believe there are a few options in portableapps portal...

If you set the exact same account info in the new client, and when you retrieve new mail it's also flagged as read at the host, then maybe they should look into some setting on their side...

It started happening about three months ago. We wasted a lot of time on a lot of theories because no one ever thought to say to me, "Log off Outlook while we test this." So I was throwing off all the results by what I was doing at home.

I would agree that it's either A or B, so I think I've described the situation right for you to have put it so well.

I was with you til the phrase "portableapps portal" and that was where you jumped past my technical level.
To be clear, I'm trying my best here, but I am NOT a techie!

If there's something I can log onto somehow that would download my email and see what happens in CPX,
I'm open to that...so long as downloading to this new thing won't keep Outlook from later downloading the
same notes? I wouldn't want to lose emails in the process.

Thanks for a good idea!

Oh, my bad, sorry about that!!!
This is what i meant by PortableApps Portal -> Portable App Directory | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives
There, you will find a lot portable apps... A portable apps is an app that does not require installation, and 'does not modifiy' your system in order to work...
Once you download an application, you just 'install it' by placing the files in a folder, and that's it...
So that you can actually put them in a pendirve for instance, and use them in any pc, taking your files and configurations with you...

To this test I think it's the best way, nice and simple... Once the tests are over, you just delete the folder and that's it.

Good luck!