Allow users to turn off the sender photos and color icons in the message list
Allow users to turn off the sender photos in the message list (the middle column of the three). It's overly busy for my tastes.
(Full disclosure, I'm a Microsoft employee)

Thanks for the feedback!
To turn these off do the following:
1) Click on the Gear in the upper right hand corner
2) In the Quick Settings Pane that opened look for Sender Photos
3) You can enable or disable the Sender photos right there.
Thanks for the feedback, and please keep it coming!
257 comments
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Y S commented
Yes, Eye Candy, like the disappearing scroll bar & other things new MS employees add to show their worth -It is all useless!
Kindly make items of this level as options!
Please. -
Anonymous commented
Voting with everyone else. The eye candy is useless and distracting. If there are those who find it useful, make it an option to add. Please rescue us and remove this nuisance. Address book option were much better in 2010.
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Anonymous commented
Voting with everyone else. The eye candy is useless and distracting. If there are those who find it useful, make it an option to add. Please rescue and remove this nuisance. Address book option were much better in 2010.
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Merrick commented
The color circle and 1" wide column of white space in the reading pane is still there after "completed" 01/07/19 proposed setting changes. This column of space is valuable when using a portrait screen orientation. Same goes for the message selection bubble. I can ctrl click just fine without needing a dedicated permanent column.
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Anonymous commented
I don't want to see coloured circles or people's photos. It wastes space and encourages ostentation. I don't need to be reminded of sender's initials either
Please get rid of it it's pointless
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Anonymous commented
you can turn them off in setting for the message list but they still are on the individual messages, how do I turn that off and get rid of the Linkedin icon?
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Anonymous commented
One of the motivations for this request, was to free up more horizontal space to the message subject. Currently, only a two or three words of the message subject are visible, especially if it's a mailing list post where the subject is prefixed with [list-name]. The mentioned solution hides the icon, but does not make the horizontal space taken up by the icon available for the message subject.
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Rich Mesagna commented
It took you forever to implement a change to simply hide the circle where the sender photo appears, this is not what all these votes were looking for.
What we want is to turn off the sender photo so that we get a more compact message list, so that we can see more messages on one screen.
You completely missed the mark here.
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Anonymous commented
Not helpful. Could not find "sender photos" in the Quick Setting Pane. There way Sender Images that I have turned off. This does not stop emojies from being included in the subject of junk email.
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Frédéric B. commented
Note: I'm talking about the desktop version here.
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Frédéric B. commented
Not, it's not "completed".
I can't believe you missed the point by that much, so this time I'm giving you a diagram:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhioM5Iv4MQ_gSVNLaxazuO_tdXV -
Anonymous commented
I did that long ago. The random color icons with initials still remain on the messages. They are (to me, at least) distracting and irritating. If you'd drop the initials (which are not useful) and make it possible to change colors to use as indicators for type of contact, now THAT would be useful. Otherwise, would prefer not to see them.
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hopc1 commented
The new version is awful. Thank goodness Anonymous entered how to get rid of them. They were extremely distracting.
Thank you Anonymous!!
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icuthy commented
Please get rid of the colored icons before the sender's name. SO IRRITATING! I consciously have to work to block them out just to scan my inbox.
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Anonymous commented
Here is what worked for me
I think these steps work both in hotmail and outlook.com
Click Settings cog at top right of main screen
Click link at very bottom that reads "View all Outlook settings"
Scroll down at right to "Sender Images"
Click "Don't show sender images"
Click Save
Click Top right X to close
Those darn images and initials are gone! Hurray! -
tdawnl68 commented
Hate the obnoxious icons in front of the email in the inbox. Is there a way to turn them off?
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Anonymous commented
So where is that setting? Why keep changing hotmail? A perfectly good system is constantly being 'fiddled with' for the sake of it.
(From a former computer programmer who has used Hotmail for many, many years)
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Frédéric B. commented
The images are invisible, but they still take as much place, so the message lines are still way too thick. Properly done the interface could show twice as many messages!
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Eileen Walsh commented
I used to be able to see the names. Now if I remove the circle, I cannot see the names. STOP updating these things. It worked ok Leave it alone.
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Carolyn Cox commented
Hate it!