One advantage of e-mail is the ease with which you can reply to or forward a message. The techniques are quite simple. But if you want to be an effective e-mail user, you need to consider the content of your replies and cover notes — in particular, how much text of the incoming message to quote in your own message and how to make that text stand out.
Replying to Messages
To reply either to an open message or to the message currently selected in the Information Viewer, click the Reply or Reply to All button, or choose Compose, Reply or Compose, Reply to All. The message opens in a new message window (Figure 11.10) with the addresses already in the To and Cc boxes (Bcc recipients do not receive replies).
In some cases, Reply to All may include your own address in the To box; if this happens, just delete your address.
Special Note: It’s easy to reply directly from the Information Viewer, without opening the message first. However, if you do that, you won’t know whether there are any voting buttons in the message.
If there was an attachment in the original message, the reply includes a reference to the file but not the file itself. Outlook assumes that the person you are replying to already has a copy.
After you reply to or forward a message, its icon changes in the Information Viewer. Also, if you open the received message again, it displays details about the last time you replied or forwarded it. See Figure 11.11 for an example.
Special Note: Only other users of Outlook or Exchange will be able to read the attached messages if you forward multiple messages using the technique depicted in Figure 11.12. If you need to forward several messages to someone who is using a different mail program, use Insert, Message instead. Select multiple messages in the Insert Message dialog box, then choose to insert as Text only. See “Inserting Files, Items, and Objects” in Chapter 10 for more information.
Forwarding Messages
To forward a selected message, choose Compose, Forward. A new message window opens containing the incoming message. Enter the addresses of people you want to forward the message to, just as you would for a new message. Type in a cover note if you want.
You can also select multiple messages in the Information Viewer and forward them. Instead of appearing as text, the way a single forwarded message does, these messages appear as attachments in your new message, as shown in Figure 11.12.
Dealing with Custom Messages
Not all incoming messages open in the familiar message window. If you see an item with an icon other than the standard envelope for e-mail, it is a custom message, which you should open rather than reply to. An Outlook task request, such as that shown in Figure 11.13, is a good example of a custom message type. When you see special buttons on a message such as this, it’s safe to assume the buttons are there for a reason. Use the appropriate action button instead of the normal Reply or Reply to All option.
Quoting Incoming Messages
As soon as your e-mail volume exceeds a couple dozen messages a day, you may find that it’s increasingly difficult to recall the earlier portions of a message exchange. This is especially true with mailing lists, where several days may separate the original message and subsequent replies.
The standard method for dealing with this is to quote as much of the original message as necessary to make your meaning clear. Two approaches are recommended, depending on whether you’re responding point by point:
If you are responding individually to a series of questions or points in the original message, quote each original question, then add your response.
If you are responding to the whole incoming message, put that response at the top of the message. Below, include enough of the original message to get the point across. The advantage of putting the response at the top is that it makes it easier for the recipient to see the new information.
In either case, remove extraneous material from the original message and rearrange it as needed, but don’t edit the remaining text of the message.
Outlook offers several ways to quote incoming text and highlight your reply:
indent the original message text
put your reply text in a different color or font
mark your reply comments with your name
use Internet-style quoting to mark the original text with a > character at the start of each line (available only if the Internet E-mail service is installed)
turn on change tracking in WordMail to mark your comments in red with a double-underline
The first three methods are controlled by the Reading tab in the Options dialog box. Choose Tools, Options, then switch to the Reading tab shown in Figure 11.14. Under “When replying to a message” and “When forwarding a message,” you have these choices:
Do not include original message (replies only)
Attach original message
Include original message text (default for forwards)
Include and indent original message text (default for replies)
Remember that only other Outlook and Exchange users can open the original message if you attach it. Therefore, one of the text options is probably your best bet.
By default, Outlook uses blue, 10-point Arial text for comments that you add to the original message when you reply to or forward it. To change this, click the appropriate Font button on the Reading tab (Figure 11.14) and choose the font settings you want to use.
Another Outlook default is the insertion of your name in brackets before any comments that you make in the middle of the original text. If you don’t like this, clear the “Mark my comments with” check box on the Reading tab (Figure 11.14).
Any indenting or blue text will be seen only by recipients capable of handling RTF messages. Other users will see plain text.
If you send to people who aren’t using Outlook or Exchange, you also may want to use the more traditional Internet method of quoting with a character at the beginning of each line. Microsoft Exchange Server can be set up to automatically quote reply and forward messages with a > character. Check with your system administrator to see whether this setting is in place on your system.
For other services, Internet-style quoting is available only if the Internet E-mail service is installed in your profile. If it is, choose Tools, Options, then switch to the Internet E-mail tab to see the dialog box shown in Figure 11.15.
To enable quoting, select “When replying to messages, indent original text with.” You can change the quoting character. Note that you also get the option of placing your signature and reply at the end of the message, rather than before the quoted original text. Once you enable quoting, it applies to all messages, not just those sent with the Internet E-mail service.
If Internet-style quoting doesn’t work at first, return to the Reading tab (Figure 11.14), and clear the “Mark my comments with” check box. This option is not compatible with Internet-style quoting.
WordMail has its own quoting method — indenting the original message and marking your comments in red with a double-underline. That’s what recipients using WordMail will see. Other Outlook and Exchange recipients see your comments in blue with a single underline. Recipients who can’t handle RTF text won’t see anything to distinguish your comments from the body of the original message.
Figures 11.16a–11.16c help illustrate the different methods for quoting original text in replies. Figure 11.16a uses the default Outlook method of indenting the original text and placing the cursor at the top of the message. Figure 11.16b shows Internet-style quoting, with the cursor at the bottom of the message. In Figure 11.16c, you see how WordMail does it, with indenting and special styles.
TIPS AND TRICKS
Our tips and tricks for this chapter include several more ways to customize the way Outlook handles incoming messages and your responses.
Changing the Look of Replies
Earlier you learned how to change the font for replies. But maybe you’d like more control over how replies look. The key is a group of files in the Program Files\MicrosoftOffice\Office\Headers folder (or its equivalent on your system). The Reply.usa file contains the template for replies sent without Internet E-mail quoting, while Reply.rtf is a copy of that template. Here’s how to alter these files:
Make a backup copy of Reply.usa and Reply.rtf.
Open Reply.rtf in WordPad or Word (see Figure 11.17).
To change the font for the Internet E-mail reply header and quote mark, change the font for the “——Original Message——” line.
To change the font and layout of the regular Outlook reply, change the fonts and move around or remove fields as you see fit. I think they’re pretty self-explanatory. The fields in square brackets ([]) use information from the incoming message. Be careful; it’s possible that changing them could affect the Internet E-mail reply header as well.
Choose File, Save to save Reply.rtf.
Choose File, Save As to save it also as Reply.usa, making sure to keep it in RTF format.
Close Word or WordPad.
These changes take effect the next time you reply to a message.
If you are using WordMail, change the way replies look by editing the Email.dot (or other template that you’re using) directly in Word 97. Choose Format, Styles and change the styles to suit you.
You might notice that the Headers folder also contains similar templates for forwarded messages, appointments, folder posts, and tasks.
Changing the New Mail Notification Sound
By default, Outlook uses a ding sound (Ding.wav) when new mail arrives. If you’d like something snazzier, follow these steps:
Click the Start button, then Settings, Control Panel. Next start the Sounds applet.
Under Events, select New Mail Notification, listed under Windows sounds.
Under Name, choose the sound you want to use for the New Mail Notification event. You can also click the Browse button to locate more sound files on your computer.
When you’ve selected a sound, you can preview it before finalizing your choice. When you are satisfied, press OK to save the new sound.
Changing the Font for Incoming Mail
If you change the default font for new messages you compose, you also change the font used to read incoming messages that don’t include RTF. Both new and incoming messages use the same default font.
To change the default font,
Choose Tools, Options, then switch to the Sending tab.
Click Font, then choose the font settings from the Font dialog box.
Click OK twice to save the new font settings.
Note that this does not affect the font of messages arriving from the Internet via Microsoft Exchange Server.
Changing the Subject of a Received Message
If you plan to file an incoming message in another folder, you might occasionally need to change the subject so you can find it more easily later. Even though the Subject field in a received message does not appear with a text box, as it does in a new message you compose, you can still edit it. Just click inside the subject text and start typing or deleting.
Retrieving Messages Left on the Server
You can configure the Internet E-mail service to leave messages on the Internet mail server, either as a backup precaution or so that you can retrieve them from a different location (see “Advanced Properties” in Chapter 6). But how do you get these messages again later if you’ve already retrieved them once? The solution is to use Remote Mail, which we cover in the next chapter. When you download message headers, those messages you retrieved earlier are displayed in the Information Viewer in normal font, while new messages that you haven’t seen are in bold. You can mark them to download (which also deletes them from the server), download a copy (which leaves them on the server), or delete the messages permanently from the server.
SUMMARY
Experiment to find out the message retrieval methods that work best for you and for the services installed in your Outlook profile. You’ll soon become adept at processing new mail using the many techniques that Outlook offers for retaining mail and sharing it with others. Some key points to remember:
Retrieving messages can take place automatically or manually.
You must start Outlook to receive new messages.
When quoting incoming messages in your replies, use just enough of the original text to get the meaning across.
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