Handling Your E-Mail

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” reads the inscription on the Eighth Avenue New York Post Office Building. E-mailers face a different set of difficulties. Instead of snow, rain, or gloomy nights, they face junk mail blizzards, pesky colleagues, and the occasional co-worker who believes that all e-mail messages should be copied to everyone in the office. This article explains the basics of sending and receiving e-mail, but it also goes a step further to help you organize and manage your e-mail messages. This article unscrews the inscrutable. It shows you how to send files and pictures with e-mail messages, make a distribution list so that you can e-mail many people simultaneously, and postpone sending a message. You can also find out how to reorganize e-mail in the Inbox window and be alerted to incoming messages from certain people or from people writing about certain subjects. Finally, this article shows how to create different folders for storing and organizing your e-mail.

Addressing and Sending E-Mail Messages

Sorry, you can’t send chocolates or locks of hair by e-mail, but you can send words by the bucketful. These pages explain how to send e-mail messages, copies of messages, and blind copies of messages, as well as reply to and forward e-mail.

The basics: Sending an e-mail message

After you get the hang of it, sending an e-mail message is as easy as falling off a turnip truck. The first half of this article addresses everything you need to know about sending e-mail messages. Here are the basics:

1. In the Mail folder, click the New button or choose Ctrl+N.

2. Enter the recipient’s e-mail address in the To text box. The next section in this article, “Addressing an e-mail message,” explains the numerous ways to address an e-mail message. You can address the same message to more than one person by entering more than one address in the To text box. For that matter, you can send copies of the message and blind copies of the message to others (see “Sending copies and blind copies of messages” later in this article).

3. In the Subject text box, enter a descriptive title for the message. When your message arrives on the other end, the recipient will see the subject first. Enter a descriptive subject that helps the recipient decide whether to read the message right away. After you enter the subject, it appears in the title bar of the Message window.

4. Type the message. Whatever you do, don’t forget to enter the message itself! You can spellcheck your message by pressing F7 or by choosing Tools -> Spelling. As long as you compose messages in HTML format and the person receiving your e-mail messages has software capable of reading HTML, you can decorate messages to your heart’s content (later in this article, “All about Message Formats” explains the HTML issue). Experiment with fonts and font sizes. Boldface and underline text. Throw in a bulleted or numbered list. You will find many formatting commands on the Format menu and Formatting toolbar in the Message window. To choose the default font and font size with which messages are written, choose Tools -> Options, select the Mail Format tab in the Options dialog box, and click the Fonts button. You see the Fonts dialog box. Click a Choose Font button and, in the dialog box that appears, select a font, font style, and font size.

5. Click the Send button. As “Postponing Sending a Message” explains later in this article, you can put off sending a message. Messages remain in the Outbox folder if you postpone sending them or if Outlook can’t send them right away because your computer isn’t connected to the Internet. If you decide in the middle of writing a message to write the rest of it later, choose File -> Save or press Ctrl+S; then close the Message window. The message will land in the Drafts folder. When you’re ready to finish writing the message, open the Drafts folder and double-click your unfinished message to resume writing it. Copies of e-mail messages you have sent are kept in the Sent Items folder. If you prefer not to keep copies of sent e-mail messages on hand, choose Tools -> Options and, on the Preferences tab of the Options dialog box, click the E-Mail Options button. You see the E-Mail Options dialog box. Deselect the Save Copies of Messages in Sent Items Folder check box.

Addressing an e-mail message

How do you address an e-mail message in the To text box of the Message Window. Let me count the ways:

 -  Get the address (or addresses) from the Contacts folder: Click the To (or Cc or Bcc) button to send a message to someone whose name is on file in your Contacts folder. You see the Select Names dialog box. Click or Ctrl+click to select the names of people to whom you want to send the message. Then click the To-> button (or Cc-> or Bcc-> button) to enter addresses in the To text box (or Cc or Bcc text boxes) of the Message window. Click OK to return to the Message window. This is the best way to address an e-mail message to several different people.

 -  Type a person’s name from the Contacts folder: Simply type a person’s name if the name is on file in the Contacts folder. To send the message to more than one person, enter a comma (,) or semicolon (;) between each name.

 -  Type the address in the To text box: If you have entered the address recently or the address is on file in your Contacts folder or Address Book, a pop-up message with the complete address appears. Press Enter to enter the address without your having to type all the letters. To send the message to more than one person, enter a comma (,) or semicolon (;) between each address.

 -  Reply to a message sent to you: Select the message in the Inbox folder and click the Reply button. The Message window opens with the address of the person to whom you’re replying already entered in the To text box. This is the most reliable way (no typos on your part) to enter an e-mail address. You can also click the Reply to All button to reply to the e-mail addresses of all the people to whom the original message was sent.

Sending copies and blind copies of messages

Sending copies of messages and blind copies of messages is simple enough, but think twice before you do it. In my experience, a dysfunctional office is one where people continuously send copies of messages to one another, to supervisors, to itemize their quarrels or document their work. However, sending copies of messages can clog mailboxes and waste everyone’s time. When you send a copy of a message, the person who receives the message knows that copies have been sent because the names of people to whom copies were sent appear at the top of the e-mail message. But when you send blind copies, the person who receives the message does not know that others received it. Follow these instructions to send copies and blind copies of messages:

 -  Send a copy of a message: Enter e-mail addresses in the Cc text box of the Message window or, in the Select Names dialog box, select names and click the Cc->button.

 -  Send a blind copy of a message: In the Message window, click the To or Cc button to open the Select Names dialog box. Then select the names and click the Bcc-> button, or else enter addresses in the Bcc text box. People who often send blind copies can make the Bcc text box appear in all Message windows. To do so, choose View -> Bcc Field in any Message window.

Replying to and forwarding e-mail messages

Replying to and forwarding messages is as easy as pie. For one thing, you don’t need to know the recipient’s e-mail address to reply to a message. In the Inbox, select the message you want to reply to or forward and do the following:

 -  Reply to author: Click the Reply button. The Message window opens with the sender’s name already entered in the To box and the original message in the text area below. Write a reply and click the Send button.

 -  Reply to all parties who received the message: Click the Reply to All button. The Message window opens with the names of all parties who received the message in the To and Cc boxes and the original message in the text box. Type your reply and click the Send button.

 -  Forward a message: Click the Forward button. The Message window opens with the text of the original message. Either enter an e-mail address in the To text box or click the To button to open the Select Names dialog box and select the names of the parties to whom the message will be forwarded. Add a word or two to the original message if you like; then click the Send button. To find the e-mail address of someone who sent you an e-mail message, double-click the message to display it in the Message window, and then right-click the sender’s name in the To box and choose Outlook Properties. The e-mail address appears in the E-Mail Properties dialog box. To add a sender’s name to the Contacts folder, right-click the name and choose Add to Outlook Contacts. By default, the text of the original message appears in the Message window when you click the Reply or Reply to All button to respond to a message. However, Outlook offers the option of not displaying the original text by default. The program also offers different ways of displaying this text. To scope out these options and perhaps select one, choose Tools -> Options and, on the Preferences tab of the Options dialog box, click the E-Mail Options button. You see the E-Mail Options dialog box. Choose an option on the When Replying to a Message drop-down list to tell Outlook how or whether to display original messages in replies.