Categories and Message Flags
At the bottom of the Options tab (Figure 10.12) is the Categories button. Click it to assign one or more categories to an outgoing message, or just type the names of categories into the box next to the button. If the recipient uses Outlook and RTF is assigned for the address, the message will have the same category when it arrives in the other user’s Inbox.
Under the same conditions (using Outlook and an RTF-enabled address), a message sent with a Message Flag will be flagged when it arrives. Click the Message Flag button, or choose Edit, Message Flag. In the Flag Message dialog box (Figure 10.16), pick from the Flag list or type your own action in the Flag box. If you want to set a due date for the action, enter it in the By box. You can also click the arrow button to pick from the calendar.
Message flags are a useful tool for drawing particular attention to certain messages. Use the By Message Flag or Flagged for Next Seven Days view in the Inbox or any mail folder to see which messages have been flagged for action. A message flagged for a particular date turns red in the Inbox when it’s overdue.
You can use Categories in criteria for the Rules Wizard (see Chapter 17) to process sent messages. For incoming messages, both Categories and Message Flag actions can be used in rules.
Saving Drafts
Sometimes you want to create a message, then save it for later revision or perhaps as a model for a report that you need to send every month. Outlook can save such drafts. Compose the message, then click the Save button, choose File, Save, or just close the message and respond Yes when you’re asked whether you want to save changes. This places the message in your Inbox. (If you opened the message from another folder, it saves it back into that folder.) To save a draft message to a different folder, choose File, Move to Folder.
When you’re ready to send the message, do one of the following:
If you want to keep a copy of the message for later use (as in the case a monthly report format): Select the message, then choose Compose, Forward or click the Forward button
If you don’t want to keep a copy of the draft message: Open the message, then message choose File, Send.
SENDING AND DELIVERING MESSAGES
When you’ve composed and addressed a message, choose File, Send or click the Send button to send the message. This places the message in the Outbox for delivery. Sending a message and delivering it are separate steps in Outlook, but delivery often takes place automatically.
One factor that governs delivery is whether you are connected full-time via a network or whether you dial in to connect to your mail server. If you are connected to an Exchange server on a network, messages are delivered immediately. For Microsoft Mail, deliveries take place at a specified interval. For Internet E-mail, messages in the Outbox are delivered immediately if you are using a LAN connection.
For any service where you must make a dial-up networking connection, delivery does not occur until the next connection, either manual or scheduled. The chapters in Part II of this book cover delivery options for various information services. Many services let you schedule connections either at regular intervals or at a particular time of day.
Two manual techniques exist for delivering messages. We cover Remote Mail in detail in Chapter 12. The other manual delivery method is called Check for New Mail.
Using Check for New Mail
On the Tools menu in Outlook, you see two Check for New Mail choices, Check for New Mail and Check for New Mail On.
The first choice, Check for New Mail, processes messages from the services you specify as part of your profile options. While there isn’t a toolbar button for Check for New Mail, you can press F5 rather than pick from the Tools menu. Here’s how to specify the services that are checked:
Choose Tools, Options, then switch to the E-mail tab.
In the “Check for new mail on” list, check the services you want to access when you use Check for New Mail. In the example shown in Figure 10.17, I’ve cleared the box for Internet Mail because I always access that mail account with Remote Mail. Since I want to access all the other services with Check for New Mail, I leave them checked. This lets me choose Tools, Check for New Mail just once and get all the mail from each service, except Internet Mail.
After you select the services in the Options dialog box and return to the Information Viewer, press F5 or choose Tools, Check for New Mail to connect to all the services you checked.
The second function, Check for New Mail On, lets you decide which services to check during any mail checking session. When you choose Tools, Check for New Mail On, the dialog box shown in Figure 10.18 appears. Select just the services that you want to access at this time, then click OK to put Outlook into action downloading new mail and uploading anything pending in your Outbox.
Note that Check for New Mail not only retrieves any mail waiting for you on the server, but also sends all Outbox messages.
Special Note: If you have Outlook 8.20 or a later version, you can toggle WordMail on and off by choosing, Tools, Use Word as the E-mail Editor.
When Messages Fail
Sometimes messages don’t get through. We discuss common problems in Chapter 21. If the message fails because Outlook could not deliver it for some reason, you will see an Undeliverable notice in your Inbox from the System Administrator (a mythical person who watches over these things). Open that message to see the reason for the failure. Figure 10.19 shows an example of such a message.
Click the Send Again button to resend an undeliverable message. If the message was delivered successfully to some recipients but not to others, the Resend To, Resend Cc, and Resend Bcc boxes will contain only the addresses that failed. You can change any address, but no other part of the message. Click the Send button to put the message back in the Outbox for another delivery attempt.
Resending a Message
What if a message didn’t fail, but you want to resend it anyway — perhaps to a different group of recipients? Here’s how:
Find the message in Sent Items, then open it.
Choose Tools, Resend This Message.
Edit the message, adding new recipients, then send it.
Special Note: WordMail uses a special toolbar in addition to the Word formatting toolbar. The Outlook Send Mail toolbar contains buttons for mail functions, such as sending messages and checking names, plus Word functions commonly used in creating messages. You cannot, however, edit this toolbar. If you want to add new buttons for WordMail, you must edit the template in Word and work with the formatting toolbar (or any other standard Word toolbar). You can also add your own custom toolbars. After you save the template, create a new message in Outlook. You should be able to use View, Toolbars to see the new toolbar you created.
Recalling a Message
What if you sent the wrong message or it went to the wrong people? Under certain conditions, Outlook lets you recall or replace a message. Message Recall works only if
the recipient is using Outlook
the recipient is logged on to the mail provider
the message has not been moved from the Inbox
the message has not been read
The main use for Message Recall is in a Microsoft Exchange Server environment.
To recall a message,
Find the message in Sent Items, then open it.
Choose Tools, Recall This Message.
In the Recall This Message dialog box (Figure 10.20), choose whether to delete the message or replace it. Also, choose whether to receive success and failure notifications for all recipients, then click OK.
If you choose to replace the message, a message window opens where you can create the replacement message. When you’ve finished, click Send.
SENDING FROM APPLICATIONS AND THE INTERNET
Many Windows applications let you send the current document as an attachment to an e-mail message. Check the File menu for a Send command to see whether your application is mail-enabled in this fashion.
When you choose File, Send from within an application, a new message window appears with the current document already inserted. You just fill in the addresses, subject, and any accompanying text, then send the message.
On Web pages on the Internet, you often see hotlinks that contain mailto links rather than http:// locations. When you click a mailto link, your system’s default mail program launches a new message window, with the recipient’s address filled in.
To make Outlook the default mail program on Windows 95, if it isn’t already,
Click Start, Settings, Control Panel, then run the Internet applet.
Switch to the Programs tab.
Under Mail, select Microsoft Outlook, then click OK.
An alternative procedure for both Windows 95 and Windows NT is as follows:
In Windows Explorer, choose View, Options, then switch to the File Types tab.
In the “Registered file types” list, select URL:MailTo Protocol, then click Edit.
In the Edit File Type dialog box, under Actions, select “open,” then click Edit.
Under “Application used to perform action,” you should see this command:
Adjust the path to Outlook.exe, if necessary, to match that on your system. Click OK when you’re finished.
USING WORDMAIL
If you have Microsoft Word 97, you can use Word as your e-mail editor instead of Outlook’s standard editor, gaining access to Word’s AutoText and AutoCorrect functions, macros, thesaurus, and multiple spelling dictionaries. Word requires more system resources, though.
To activate WordMail or see how it’s configured, choose Tools, Options from the main Outlook menu. On the E-mail tab (Figure 10.17), select “Use Microsoft Word as the e-mail editor.” WordMail operates through Word templates that include special styles for the message headers and special macros for mail functions. Click Template to select the template you want to use.
When you open a message with WordMail, the Word commands are added to the Outlook menus. You get almost all Word functions at your fingertips — AutoText, AutoCorrect, styles, tables, and so on. WordMail intelligently converts any special formatting to a plain-text equivalent and delivers that to recipients who need it, while it delivers the fully formatted message to recipients who can handle RTF.
Also, when you reply to or forward a message, WordMail turns on revision-tracking, so that all changes you make are clearly marked. To turn off revision-tracking in a WordMail message, choose Tools, Track Changes, Highlight Changes, then clear the “Track changes while editing” box on the Highlight Changes dialog box.
Editing and Adding Templates
If you want to enhance WordMail with macros or custom toolbars, you must make those changes in a WordMail template itself, rather than while composing or reading a message with WordMail. The WordMail templates included with Office 97 are stored as .dot files in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office folder or the corresponding folder on your system.
If you edit styles, toolbars, or macros, make sure that you specify that changes be saved in the current WordMail template, not in Normal.dot.
To create a new template, open an existing WordMail template in Word as a guide, so the necessary styles and macros are included, then choose File, Save As to save it as a new .dot file. You can then make any modifications you choose. It is not possible to add macros that automatically run when a new message is opened in WordMail.
Configuring the WordMail AutoSignature
Messages created or opened with WordMail ignore some of the settings in Outlook, in particular the AutoSignature and the settings for quoting messages (see “Quoting Incoming Messages” in Chapter 11).
To create an AutoSignature in WordMail,
Click the New Mail Message button, or choose File, New, Mail Message.
Type in the signature with formatting and any graphics.
Select the signature.
Choose Tools, AutoSignature.
If you want a blank line before the signature, select “Add blank line prior to AutoSignature.”
Click Yes to save the AutoSignature you selected.
The AutoSignature is saved in the current template as an AutoText entry named SIGNATURE. It is inserted at the top of every message you send, forward, or reply to.
TIPS AND TRICKS
As you can imagine, since sending messages is basic to Outlook, there are some interesting tricks you’ll want to try. Among the techniques in this section, you’ll learn how to view Bcc recipients and send Internet messages from a particular account.
Viewing Bcc Recipients
If you open a message from Sent Items, the Bcc Field option is not available on the View menu. However, Outlook 8.03, the update that coincides with the release of Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5, automatically displays any Bcc recipients for messages in the Sent Items folders. In earlier versions, choose Tools, Resend This Message, and you’ll be able to view the Bcc box and any addresses you entered in it.
Sending from a Particular Internet Account
If you have more than one Internet mail account in your profile, the Internet E-mail service gives you no direct way to designate which mail account is used for a particular message. However, you can control this with the delivery order list. Choose Tools, Services, then switch to the Delivery tab. The account at the top of the “Recipient addresses are processed…” list is the one used to send any new messages that you create.
If you need to send from a different account, use this dialog box to change the delivery order before you create the new message. You do not need to restart Outlook after changing the delivery order.
Another approach to managing delivery from multiple accounts is to use multiple profiles with the same Personal Folders file. You can also use the “Have replies sent to” option on the Options tab of a new message to specify a different reply address.
Turning a Word Document into a WordMail Message
A handy feature of Microsoft Word 97 is that you can start writing a document and later turn it into a WordMail message rather than sending it as a file attachment. You need to have WordMail set as your editor in Outlook (see “Using WordMail”), then follow these steps:
In Word, choose Tools, Options.
In the Options dialog box, switch to the General tab.
Clear the check box for “Mail as attachment.”
Click OK to close the Options dialog box.
Choose File, Send To, Mail Recipient.
The document will be turned into a WordMail message, formatting and all.
To go back to sending Word documents as attached files, return to the General tab of the Word Options dialog box, and select “Mail as attachment.”
SUMMARY
Once you know how to create and send messages, you’re well on your way to putting Outlook to work. You have a number of options regarding how messages look, what you include in them, and even what tools you use to create them. Here are some key points to remember:
You can type in part of a person’s name for a recipient address and have Outlook look up the exact address and enter it for you.
You can select Contacts recipients through the Address Book dialog box, but can’t create them there.
Too much formatting can either clutter a message or make the message take longer to display.
You can attach files anywhere in an Outlook message.
For an individual message, you can override the receipts, sensitivity, importance, or other default properties.
Sending a message and delivering it are separate steps with some Outlook services.
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