return receipts arrive entirely at the choice of the recipient. They are tuned off in my Thunderbird so you would assume it was broken if you asked for one when emailing me.

I have tested this with a friend I have it set to on and he is not getting a request to acknowledge he received the email.

Do you want to request a return receipt everytime you send an email or only when you are sending an email which requires it ?

Settings > General scroll down to 'Reading & Display' section at bottom of that section - clickon 'Return Receipts'

This is the 'global' settings. If you always want to send a 'Return Receipt' select the checkbox 'When sending messages always request a return receipt'

Choose all the other settings you want when it comes to other people requesting you send a Return REceipt. For example you may want to set up 'allow return receipts for some messages' and set them to 'ASkme' after all you don't want to auto send out to any spam emails.

Click on 'OK'

Then you can do this on a per account basis:

• Account Settings
• select 'Return Receipts' for the account
• To use the Global settings select 'Use my global return receipt preferences for this account'
• OR do not select the above checkbox and instead set up your preferences which only get used on that specific account.

If you have set it up so that both Global and any account do not have anything set up as auto, you can then choose to add it manually to an email only if required. In a new Write message:

• Use the 'Menu Bar'
• 'Options' > select 'Return Receipt'
• This means it is only enabled for that specific email.

IF you have set it up to automatically add the 'Return Receipt' request then you can check to see if that option was auto selected before sending.

However, as Matt pointed out whether the recipient sees that 'Return Receipt' depends upon a) whether the recipients server has auto disabled it because they do not want any auto reponses to be invoked or just wanting to save on bandwidth use. b) Even if server allows the display of 'Return Receipt', the recipient may not have enabled it, so they do not see it. c) Even if server allows it and user sees it in email, it does not mean they will actually choose to manually click on 'Return Receipt' to respond because it then informs the sender that email was opened. This may not be the prefered option.

As a test: I suggest you send an email with a 'Return Receipt' to me because I have it allowed and visible, but not on an auto respond. So if I see it and manually choose to acknowledge then you should get a reponse. The email is written phonetically to avoid bots, eg: 'at' means '@' Send using Subject 'TB Test RR' so I can watch out for it. Email : mail at anje dot co dot uk