Microsoft Outlook 2007 – 101: Composing Emails

Before You Begin:

ITS provides limited support for this quicknote.  It is provided for informational purposes and questions regarding this quicknote will be answered to the best of our knowledge but are out of the scope of the ITS Helpdesk training.

Basics:

This is the second article of an article series detailing the basics of the Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 application. This article will give a detailed walk-through with composing new emails in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.

Composing a new Email:

1. Click New in the top left corner of the screen.
2. Compose the new message in the New Message window.
   • With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 comes the new ribbon interface. In the New Message window, the three primary tabs that will be used will be both the Message and Options tab.
     
   • Message Tab
     • This tab provides all of the basic text formatting functionality for altering the font/colors/etc.
     • The first highlighted section provides access to the Address Book/Contact list of Microsoft Outlook.
       • To search for a particular person, click Address Book.
       • If the name of the person is known, simply type their last name followed by a comma and then the first name in the To field. Multiple names can be separated by a semi-colon. Once the names are typed, click Check Names. Microsoft Outlook will automatically retrieve the email addresses for those persons in the Address Book.
     • The second highlighted group allows you to add attachments to your emails along with applying a signature to your emails. To attach a file, click the Paperclip. If you wish to add a signature, click the Paper and Pencil icon. [Signatures are explained later in the article].
     • The third highlighted group provides you with the ability of changing the priority and importance of the email. These are just simple ways to bring greater attention to the email when the recipient receives it.
       
   • Options Tab
     • The first highlighted region allows you to set the visibility of a few hidden fields. By default the “From” and “BCC” fields are invisible with new email messages. The options tab provides the ability to make them visible.
       • From- this is only used if you have permission to send as if you were from another email account. This functionality can only be obtained under certain circumstances by network administrators.
       • BCC – Blind Carbon Copy emails can basically be described as invisible emails. When a person is BCC-ed then neither the To Recipients or CC Recipients will know that the email was also sent to the BCC-ed recipient.
     • The Second highlighted region lets you specify the type of format for the email message.
       • Plain Text – Smaller email size and is strictly text only, no images.
       • HTML – The text is encoded with HTML which provides the capability of images, tables, advanced formatting, etc.
       • RichText - Provides more functionality than HTML emails, however RichText emails often can lead to emails with a much larger size.
     • The third highlighted region provides the functionality of voting in email messages, as well as requesting delivery/read receipts.
       • Voting can only be done by other email accounts that are configured to use Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. When the recipient receives a voting request, they will have the option to vote using the vote buttons in the Message tab. Once the recipient votes, then an email will be sent to the original sender with the response.
       • Delivery/Read receipt email will be sent to your account as soon as the email has been read/delivered by the recipient.
     • The fourth highlighted region buttons open the Message Options window which is explained later in this article.

Signatures:

A signature can be set to automatically show on new/replied/forwarded emails from you. Through this window, you are able to configure multiple signatures and assign them to different types of messages. To open this window, click Edit Signature from any window that has the Insert tab in the ribbon.

The Messaging Window can be shown by clicking any of the three buttons in the Messaging Options group of the Options tab. Through this window you are able to set the basic options of an email message such as importance and sensitivity. Along these more basic features, this window provides advanced options including when a message will be delivered, whom replies to the message get sent to, and how the emails are encoded.

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