Outlook default view not default, how do I fix this?

I think channel9 is more useful than tech support, but it is often the source of smart people who have experience with these issues...so..


Everytime I start Outlook from a cold start, my emails list like this:

But if I reset the view, it goes back to the default view which is what I want.

Anyone know why it would keep resorting to the first pic? I had this happen before I formatted, but it is happening again on this clean install.

Google gave me no help. I mean I can set the view back to defaults, that is how I got the second picture, it just seems to reset every time I start outlook. It blows my mind that it did this on two separate installations.

Can you tell me how you set it to the view you want?  Screenshots are nice, but without steps to reproduce your problem, you probably won't get any answer.

Well you see, I didn't do anything to change the view. It just changed on its own from the second screenshot to the first screenshot. I can tell you how I get it back to normal.

I go to View > Current View > Define Views

There I click reset then apply view and it is back to normal. If I then exit outlook and open it back up, it returns to the skinnier odd view.

It has to do with the width of the inbox column, try making it bigger and then smaller and you'll see that it changes from the first view you've shown to the second view.

So, make inbox column width smaller = fixed layout

Wow, that was the stupidest issue ever then. It makes sense why it would skinny itself out, I just never thought of that. I just wonder why it changed all of the sudden, I didn't change the width, weird.