Originally Posted by tarquinious

Under the View menu is "Reading Pane" If you select the setting Off, this will get rid of the message preview to the right.

The other option you have already found: View/Auto Preview. With Auto Preview on, you will see the first few lines of the message under the subject.

Another area to look at is under Tools/Options/Other/Reading Pane where you can choose to have your emails automatically changed to Read when selected for a certain number of seconds. This also affects the way Outlook displays the messages as often a message marked as Read will no longer display a preview of the message below the subject.