Composing and Sending Messages

Outlook’s e-mail features are sophisticated and comprehensive. Underneath all that power, however, are the fundamental tasks of composing, sending, and reading messages. This section explains the basics of composing and sending e-mail messages.

Quick compose and send

Outlook provides much flexibility when it comes to creating and formatting e-mail messages. Often, however, all you want to do is to quickly create and send a basic message. Here’s how:

1.	If the Mail pane is displayed, click the New button on the toolbar or press Ctrl+N to create a new, blank e-mail message. If another pane is displayed, click the down arrow to the right of the New button and select Mail Message from the list. The new message appears, as shown in Figure 27-15. Figure 27-15. A blank e-mail message ready to be composed and sent. [View full size image]
2.	Type the recipient’s address in the To field, or click the To button and select a recipient from your address book.
3.	Type the message subject in the Subject field.
4.	Type the body of the message in the main section of the message window.
5.	Click the Send button.

That’s all there is to it. Depending on Outlook’s Send and Receive options, your message is sent immediately or placed in the Outbox to be sent the next time a Send or Receive is performed. If you want to be sure that the message is sent immediately, press F9.

Sending a Message When you click the Send button to send an e-mail message, Outlook places the message in the Outbox. This is one of the mail folders displayed in the navigation pane. Depending on your connection status and Outlook option settings, the message may be transmitted to your e-mail provider immediately or it may wait until your are online or until a timed send/receive occurs. In either case, once the message is sent it is removed from the Outbox folder and a copy is saved in the Sent Items folder.

You can also create a new e-mail message using settings other than the defaults by selecting New Mail Message Using from the Actions menu. Then, from the submenu, do one of the following:

• To create a message based on stationery, select one of the recently used stationeries that are listed (if any) or select More Stationery to select from all available stationery.

• To create a message in a format (HTML, Rich Text, or plain text) other than the default, select the desired format.

Message addressing options

An e-mail message can have multiple recipients, and each recipient can be one of three types:

• To: The main message recipient(s). Every message must have at least one recipient in the To field.

• CC (Carbon Copy): Generally you use CC when a person needs to be aware of the content of the message but is not a primary recipient—that is, does not need to respond or take action. All recipients of a message can see who is in the CC list.

• BCC (Blind Carbon Copy): Like CC but the names and e-mail addresses of BCC recipients are not visible to any other recipients of the message.

Changing the reply to address

By default, the reply to address that is part of every e-mail message you sent is the reply address that you specified when you set up the e-mail account. There may be situations when you want replies to a message that you send directed to a different e-mail address. To do so, follow these steps:

1.	Click the Direct Replies To button in the More Options group of the Options tab on the Ribbon. Outlook will open the Message Options dialog box.
2.	Under Delivery Options, make sure the Have Replies Sent To option is checked.
3.	Enter the desired reply address in the adjacent box, or click the Select Names button to choose from your address book.
4.	Click OK.

Entering recipients manually

You can type recipients directly into the To, CC, and BCC fields. To enter more than one recipient in a field, use a semicolon as a separator between addresses.

Outlook’s AutoComplete feature is by default turned on for all recipient fields. As you start entering an address or name, Outlook displays suggestions based on what you have entered in the past. The suggestions come from a list of names and e-mail addresses that you have entered previously. Outlook will narrow the list as you enter more of the name or address. If the recipient you want is displayed, select it by clicking. You can also highlight it with the up and down arrow keys and press Enter. Otherwise, just continue typing in the full name or address.

Where’s the BCC Field? By default, an e-mail form does not display the BCC field in its header; it displays just the To and CC fields. You can still add BCC recipients using the Contacts list, however. If you want the BCC field displayed, click the Options tab at the top of the message window and click the Show BCC button.

When Outlook is first installed, the AutoComplete list is empty, so it may seem to not be working. As you continue to use Outlook, however, it will become a useful tool. Names that you use less frequently move to the bottom of the list and eventually disappear.

Entering recipients from your Contacts (Address Book)

Any recipients you have added as Contacts (see Chapter 30) are listed in your Address Book and can be added to an e-mail message with a few clicks. If you refer back to Figure 27-15, you can see that the e-mail window has To and CC buttons next to the corresponding fields. If the BCC field is visible, it will have an adjacent BCC button. Click any of these buttons to open the Select Names dialog box, shown in Figure 27-16.

Deleting AutoComplete Items If someone changes his or her e-mail address, you may find that old, invalid address still appearing on the AutoComplete list. When the list is displayed and you see an address you no longer want, use the down-arrow key to highlight it; then press Del.

If you have more than one address book, you should select it from the Address Book drop-down list. The default address book, which is adequate for many Outlook users, is called Contacts. The entries in the selected address book are displayed in an alphabetized list. Then, add recipients to your message as follows:

• Select a single recipient by clicking it. Select multiple recipients by holding down Ctrl while clicking.
  
  
• Add the selected recipient(s) to the To, CC, or BCC field by clicking the corresponding button.
  
  
• Add the selected recipients to the active field by pressing Enter. The active field is the one corresponding to the button you clicked—To, CC, or BCC—to display the Select Names dialog box.
  
  
• Add a single recipient to the active field by double-clicking the recipient in the list.
  
  
• To remove a recipient from the To, CC, or BCC field, click it—the entire name will become highlighted—and press Del.
  
  

When you are finished adding recipients, click the OK button to return to the message.

Searching for recipients

The Select Names dialog box lets you search for recipients by name or other information. Look at the upper-left corner of the Select Names dialog box (refer to Figure 27-2). If you select the Name option and start typing in the box, Outlook automatically highlights the first contact in the list that matches what you have typed so far. If Outlook finds no matches, the highlight moves to the end of the list.

If you select the All Fields option, enter the desired search text in the box and click the Go button. Outlook displays any contacts that have a match in any of their fields, such as Company or Mailing Address. See Chapter 29 to learn about Outlook contacts and the various kinds of information that can be stored.

Sending attachments

An attachment is a file that you send along with an e-mail message. When the recipient receives the message, he or she can save the file to disk and open it. Attachments can be a very useful way to pass documents around—whether you’re sending photos of the kids to other family members or distributing a Word document to your colleagues for review.

You should be aware of some concerns with attachments. One has to do with file size. Most e-mail accounts limit the size of attachments that can accompany an e-mail message. The limit varies between different accounts, but 10MB is a common figure. Even if your account allows you to send large attachments, the recipient’s account may prohibit receiving them.

Another concern about attachments relates to security. Certain types of files can harm your computer by introducing a virus or by other means. Outlook and other e-mail client programs block potentially harmful attachments based on the filename extension, which indicates the type of file. For example, executable program files use the .exe extension and are blocked by Outlook.

One approach to dealing with both of these concerns is to use a file archiving utility to compress your files into a zip or other kind of archive. Compression not only reduces the file size but also hides the extensions of files that might be blocked on the receiving end.

What kinds of files can you send and receive as attachments? Any image file is okay, including those with the .jpg, .gif, .png, and .tif extensions. So are text files (.txt extension), XML files (.xml extension), and most Microsoft Office documents: Word (.doc and .docx extensions), Excel (.xls and .xlsx extensions), and PowerPoint (.ppt and .pptx extensions). ZIP archives (.zip extension) are okay, too.

You may want to review the section on attachment security in Chapter 20 if you will be sending or receiving many attachments. The remainder of this section shows you how to add attachments to a message.

When you are composing an e-mail message, you attach a file as follows:

1.	If necessary, click the Message tab on the Ribbon.
2.	Click the Attach File button (with a paper clip icon). Outlook opens the Insert File dialog box, as shown in Figure 27-17. The initial display is of the files in your My Documents (Windows XP) or Documents (Windows Vista) folder. Figure 27-17. Selecting files to attach to a message. [View full size image]
3.	If necessary, use the dialog box to navigate to the folder containing the file.
4.	Click the name of the file to attach. To attach multiple files from the same folder, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking.
5.	Click the Insert button.

After you have attached one or more files, the message displays an Attached line in the header, as shown in Figure 27-18. The attached files are listed here along with the file size. If you change your mind and want to remove a file, click its name in the Attached box and press Del.

Saving message drafts

If you have started to compose a message and decide to complete it later, you can save a copy in the Drafts folder by clicking the Save icon—it looks like a diskette—on the Quick Access Toolbar at the top left of the message window. You can also select Save from the menu that is displayed by clicking the Office Button (the round icon in the top-left corner of the message window).

When you are ready to continue working on the message, open the Drafts folder by clicking it in the navigation pane; then, double-click the message to open it. You can now complete and send the message as usual.

By default, Outlook saves copies of open items, including messages you are composing, every three minutes.

Sending and Receiving Outlook’s default is to send and receive messages on all accounts when the program first starts and then every 30 minutes. If you want to send or receive manually, click the Send/Receive button on the toolbar or press F9.