The People Pane appears beneath the Reading Pane in the main window (and in all item windows). It displays thumbnail images for each person associated with the selected item and allows you to quickly access the status updates, appointments, attachments, emails, and activities for that person. It does take up a large amount of screen real estate, so your preference may be to minimize or completely disable this functionality.
Here is what the People Pain looks like:
Minimized, it looks like this:
1. Open Outlook 2010.
2. Go to the Ribbon and select the View tab.
3. Go to the People Pane section.
4. Click the People Pane button and select Minimized or Off depending on the desired result that you want to accomplish.
