By default, Outlook 2007 uses no background or special font characteristics for messages. However, it does support the use of themes and, to a lesser degree, stationery, so you can customize the look of your messages. Outlook 2007 has two types of themes as well as stationery, each of which functions a bit differently from the others. It helps to understand the differences between these options before you get started using them.
The appearance of an Outlook 2007 e-mail message is the result of a complex behind-the-scenes interaction between a number of settings. A single message is likely to draw some of its formatting information from several different sources. While much of the process of determining how a given message looks is invisible to you, it helps to understand what goes into formatting an e-mail message before you start working with these settings.
Themes apply a single, customizable look to your messages (and more, since they can be shared across 2007 Microsoft Office system applications) by combining several settings to create a specific look. Themes make it easy for you to create and implement a unified look and feel for all of your Microsoft Office system documents.
A theme has a set of font faces, coordinated colors, and graphical effects that are combined to create a palette of styles that gives you a unified look for all of the elements of your messages. Each portion of a theme can use built-in or custom settings that you create, giving you an endless number of combinations to work with. The components of a theme are:
Colors. A set of eight colors that are applied consistently across all of the graphical elements in your e-mail. You can use built-in color sets or create your own.
Fonts. Two fonts—one for body text and another for heading text—are used as the basis for the gallery of font styles used by that theme. Outlook 2007 has a number of built-in theme fonts, or you can create a custom set.
Effects. An effect is a particular look for graphical objects created by using different values for lines, fills, and 3-D effects to create varying end results. Effects are selected from a built-in gallery. You cannot create custom effects.
Page Color. The page background can be a solid color, gradient, pattern, texture, or picture, or it can be left blank.
Note
Although you can save a theme that includes a background set by using the Page Color command, the background is not applied when you use that theme in Outlook 2007. To set a default background, you must use stationery or a legacy theme.
Office Themes are created in Outlook 2007, Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007. In Outlook 2007, you create and apply these themes within an e-mail message. (Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007 has the widest range of theme creation options.) Themes are stored as .thmx files under your user profile.
Outlook 2007 can also use themes from earlier versions of Microsoft Outlook to apply a background (color or image), a set of colors, and a few styled items, such as fonts and bulleted lists. While you can set one of these themes to be the default for new Outlook 2007 messages in the Signatures And Stationery dialog box, you have to use Microsoft FrontPage® 2003 to edit them. For most people, this limits the use of these themes to the built-in set. It’s easier to create an Office Theme or stationery if you want the functionality it supplies than to work with legacy themes. These themes are stored as a set of files (Microsoft Office system theme file [.elm], setup file [.inf], and graphics files) in C:Program FilesCommon Filesmicrosoft sharedTHEMES12.
Stationery creates a customized look for your e-mail using a background image and font formatting. With most of the Microsoft Office system document formatting moving to themes, stationery is mostly a legacy feature with only a background image and a few font styles, but it is the simplest way to get a background into new messages by default. Stationery is stored as HTML files in C:Program FilesCommon Filesmicrosoft sharedStationery, with supporting graphics in an associated folder. If you create or modify stationery using Word 2007, graphics and any other files that you use in the stationery are saved in a subfolder of the directory where you save the template.
A style set is a working set of font styles used for messages: normal, heading, title, and so on. Outlook 2007 creates a style set by applying the theme colors to the body and heading fonts to configure the actual font styles. You can customize the display of the fonts in a message and save it as a custom style set. Style sets are saved as Word 2007 templates.
Outlook 2007 combines these settings to configure the exact look of each message you create. When you create a new message, the collective default settings for new messages that you have configured are applied, as described in Table 9-1. Backgrounds can come from legacy themes or stationery, while font and graphical styling information comes from the currently saved default settings (which is usually a theme). If you have customized font styles, those are loaded from the template that you created.
Table 9-1. Message Style Components
Component | Controlled By | To Set |
|---|---|---|
Backgrounds | Stationery or legacy theme | Choose Tools, Options, and on the Mail Format tab, select Stationery And Fonts. On the Personal Stationery tab, under Theme Or Stationery To Use For New HTML Messages, choose Theme, and then select a theme. |
Colors, fonts, and effects | Office Themes | When composing a message, on the Options tab, in the Themes group, click one of the Themes options. |
Custom font styles | Style set | When composing a message, on the Format Text tab, in the Styles group, click Change Styles, and then choose Style Set. |
You can select a theme from the Themes gallery, shown in Figure 9-37, which displays built-in Office Themes and custom themes that you create. If you don’t find a theme you like in the Themes gallery, you can look for others, either locally (on your hard disk or network) or using Microsoft Office Online.
To select a theme, with a message open, on the Options tab, in the Themes group, click Theme, and then select a theme from the Themes gallery.
You can also choose to Reset To Theme From Template, which causes new Outlook 2007 messages to use the Office Theme that is the default for new messages.
If you have additional themes saved locally, you can select Browse For Themes to find them on your hard disk or in a network location.
You can also choose Save Current Theme.
You can choose a set of colors to use for the text and other style options, or you can create a new set of custom colors. To select a color, with a message open, on the Options tab, in the Themes group, click Color. Select a set of theme colors in the Colors gallery, as shown in Figure 9-38.
To create a new set of theme colors, follow these steps:
With a message open, on the Options tab, in the Themes group, click Color, and then click Create New Theme Colors.
In the Create New Theme Colors dialog box, shown in Figure 9-39, select the colors you want, enter a name for the theme colors in the Name box, and then click Save. You can then select the theme colors from the Colors gallery.
Themes use two font selections, in combination with colors and other settings, to create a range of Quick Styles for the fonts in your message. You choose a font for the headings and a font for the body text, and Outlook 2007 does the rest. You can control the font styles more precisely by saving stationery or saving a message form or using the options on the Ribbon, on the Format Text tab, in the Style group.
To select fonts, with a message open, on the Options tab, in the Themes group, click fonts. Select a font pair from the Fonts gallery, as shown in Figure 9-40.
If you want to choose two specific fonts rather than a preset pair, follow these steps:
On the Fonts menu, choose Create New Theme Fonts.
In the Create New Theme Fonts dialog box, shown in Figure 9-41, select a heading font and a body font. Give the theme fonts a name, and then click Save.
Outlook 2007 themes use effects for creating a particular look in the graphical elements (such as SmartArt and charts) that you insert in your e-mail. Effects vary in the weight of the lines they use and the opacity, glow, and texture of the surfaces on the objects that Outlook 2007 creates. The Effects gallery provides previews of the effects, but you should try out various effects on an e-mail message with some graphical elements in it to see the various effects in action.
To select an effect for your messages, open a message, and on the Options tab, in the Themes group, click Effects, and then select an effect in the Effects gallery, shown in Figure 9-42.
The Page Color option lets you select a background for the e-mail message you are composing. Outlook 2007 lets you choose from colors, gradients, textures, patterns, and pictures for your message background.)
To select a page color, in Outlook 2007, with a new, blank e-mail message open, on the Options tab, in the Themes group, select Page Color and do one of the following:
To use a color that is displayed on the Page Colors menu, click the color. The Theme Colors area displays the theme colors on the top line and light-to-dark variations of each color in a vertical bar below the color. You can also choose a standard (VGA) color or no color.
If you want to choose a different solid color, click More Colors to open the Colors dialog box. Select the color you want to use, and then click OK.
Select Fill Effects to use a gradient, texture, pattern, or picture as the message background. The Fill Effects dialog box has several tabs:
Gradient. The Gradient tab, shown in Figure 9-43, gives you several options to create a shaded background. Choose the number of colors to use, and then select the colors in the Color 1 and Color 2 drop-down lists. Choose a shading style, and then click a variant. The Sample area gives you a preview of the current settings. When you have finished, click OK.
Texture. Has a selection of small images that are tiled on the message background. Select a texture you like, or click Other Texture to select a different graphics file to use as the texture.
Pattern. Has a number of patterns to select from and lets you set the Foreground and Background colors to configure the final look of the pattern.
Picture. Lets you choose a picture to use as the background by clicking Select Picture and locating the image you want to use.
You can use these commands to create a customized theme that you can share across your Microsoft Office system documents. To create your own theme, follow these steps:
In Outlook 2007, with a new, blank e-mail message open, on the Options tab, in the Themes group, click Page Color, select a background, and then click OK.
On the Options tab, in the Themes group, click Colors, and then select a set of colors to use.
On the Options tab, in the Themes group, click Fonts, and then select a pair of fonts to use.
On the Options tab, in the Themes group, click Effects, and then select a style of effects to use.
Once you are satisfied with the configuration of the theme, save it so that you can apply it easily later on. To save the theme, on the Options tab, in the Themes group, click Themes, and then click Save Current Theme. Name the theme, and then click Save.
When you load this theme, it will set the message colors, fonts, and effects but not the background settings. To save the background, you must create either stationery or a form. If you want to configure the theme settings as well as the background image, save a form. If you want to specify only the background image and font styles that you manually format, create stationery.
Note
For information about customizing all aspects of a new message, see "Creating a Custom Message Appearance" on the next page.
With Outlook 2007 stationery, you use a set of characteristics that define the font style, color, and background image for messages. In effect, stationery can give your messages a certain look and feel, as shown in Figure 9-44. Stationery provides more limited customization than themes, and Outlook 2007 uses stationery very little. There are several built-in stationery options, although the only way to use them is to assign them as the default message format. In addition, you cannot create new stationery or customize existing stationery directly in Outlook 2007; you must use another program such as Word 2007.
You can assign a default stationery to be used in all your messages. To do so, follow these steps:
In Outlook 2007, choose Tools, Options, and then select the Mail Format tab.
On the Mail Format tab, click Stationery And Fonts to display the Signatures And Stationery dialog box.
On the Personal Stationery tab of the Signatures And Stationery dialog box, click Theme.
In the Theme Or Stationery dialog box, shown in Figure 9-45, choose the default stationery in the Choose A Theme list, and then click OK. If you have default stationery selected and no longer want your messages to use any stationery, follow the same procedure but set the default stationery to No Theme.
If you want to use fonts that are different from those in the stationery you just chose, in the Signatures And Stationery dialog box, in the Font drop-down list, under Theme Or Stationery For New HTML E-Mail Message, select either Use My Font When Replying And Forwarding Messages or Always Use My Fonts.
In the Signatures And Stationery dialog box, click the Font button for each font you want to customize, configure the options in the Font dialog box, and then click OK.
When you have finished setting the new message defaults, click OK to close the Signatures And Stationery dialog box.
As you’ve seen, each customization method supports different aspects of a new e-mail message’s format. While you can set a default background for new messages using stationery, the new message will take on the default Office Theme colors and effects as well as most font settings. Similarly, while you can specify two fonts and a set of colors in a theme, Microsoft Office system controls the interaction of your choices to create the actual font styles, so if you want to control a font style yourself, you have to use stationery.
If you want to predefine every aspect of a new e-mail message, you might have to take a few steps to create the default new message settings you want. Although you can manually configure any number of settings, optimally you will have already created all of the subparts of the new message format already. If not, it’s a good idea to do so before you get started, to give yourself easily reusable settings. Then you just have to choose a few settings and save the message format as the default.
Note
Before starting this process, you need stationery that uses your background image. For information about creating custom stationery, see "Using Stationery to Customize Your Messages" earlier in this chapter.
To create your customized default new message, follow these steps:
To set a background for new messages, click Tools, Options, and then on the Mail Format tab, click Signatures And Fonts. In Theme Or Stationery For New HTML Message, choose the stationery containing the background you want to use.
Open a new, blank e-mail message, and then verify that the background specified in the stationery is applied.
On the Options tab, in the Themes group, select the theme that contains the settings you want to use. Alternatively, you can manually configure any theme settings that you want to customize.
Select a style set (or format any text styles you want to customize).
When you are satisfied with the settings for new messages, on the Format Text tab, in the Styles group, click Change Styles, and then click Save As Default.