57. USING THIS TEMPLATE See the notes pane or view the full notes page (View menu) for detailed help on this template.
Editor's Notes
Before you begin: Before you can send and see messages, Outlook must be configured correctly. Here’s a great place to go to start that process: “ Outlook Overview: Setting up e-mail accounts in Outlook” at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011248131033.aspx. In some corporations, message format is set when Outlook is installed. If this applies to your audience, only parts of this course may be useful for them. [ Note to trainer: For detailed help in customizing this template, see the very last slide. Also, look for additional lesson text in the notes pane of some slides.]
Why would this happen and how can you avoid this scenario? Read this lesson to find out.
Before we delve into e-mail formats, we want you to think about the people who receive your e-mail messages and how they're reading them. E-mail viewers and servers differ in their capacity to handle e-mail formats and attachments. If the majority of people that you correspond with are outside of your company and are using an e-mail system that's different from yours, they may not see what you see. What's worse, what you send them may be driving them nuts.
For example, if you send someone a message formatted with rich text over the Internet, she may receive a text file with an attachment called "Winmail.dat" rather than the nicely formatted message you intended to send.
Also keep in mind that adding a picture or an attachment can increase the size of a message.
For example, you can use bold and colors to point out what’s really important, and you can even include hyperlinks. Used sparingly, these formatting features can improve your ability to deliver the message you intend. And, because most popular e-mail programs understand HTML, chances are good that when you use HTML, your recipient will see the message as you intend.
Not that RTF can't be good. One benefit of this message format is that you can show attachments inline. This can be useful, for example, if you want to send a collection of documents in a message and include notes about what each document contains. But even this benefit is only useful when you're sending e-mail messages to people who are using Outlook running under Microsoft Exchange Server. Otherwise, you're better off forgoing RTF and sticking with HTML or Plain Text.
If you're curious about blocked attachments, see “Blocked attachments: It’s about security” later in this course or the "Useful links" section of the Quick Reference Card (there’s a link to this at the end of the course). [ Note to trainer: Steps or callouts—presented in either numbered or bulleted lists—are always shown in yellow text.]
Plain Text format is a very predictable format. All e-mail programs understand it; and, as we just mentioned, Plain Text format produces the smallest message files of Outlook’s available formats.
There's a benefit for you, too: If you save your sent messages, Plain Text messages will take the least amount of disk space to store. The downside? With Plain Text, you can't use anything fun, like bold, italics, or color. Tip: You can change some settings for Plain Text messages, such as the default font and the number of characters allowed in a line before the text wraps. We'll tell you how to change the font in the practice session at the end of this lesson, and we'll talk a little about line length in the Quick Reference Card at the end of this course.
What if you change your mind? You can always change the format of a message—even if you've already started writing it. How you do this will depend on whether you’re using Microsoft Word as your e-mail editor. With Word as your e-mail editor, choose the format you want on the message toolbar. If you've turned off Word as your e-mail editor, you're using the Outlook editor. Choose a new format using the Format menu.
By default, Word is selected as your e-mail editor.
You can change the settings for this filter if you want to increase or decrease the amount of formatting information that's included with your message. We've included instructions for how to change the settings for this filter in the Quick Reference Card at the end of this course.
Note: Received messages will have the format that the sender chose when he or she created and sent the message to you. However, there is an option to view all received messages in Plain Text if that's your preference. We'll cover that in "Received messages: The sender sets the format” later on in this course.
[ Note to trainer: With Outlook 2003 installed on your computer, you can click the link in the slide to go to an online practice. In the practice, you can work through each of these tasks in Outlook, with instructions to guide you. Important: If you don’t have Outlook 2003, you won’t be able to access the practice session.]
Now that you've thought a bit about the impact your sent messages can make, think of the format of messages that come to you. With Outlook, you can control how you see the messages you receive.
For example, there is an option to view all received messages in Plain Text if that's your preference. Even better, Outlook contains some built-in safeguards to help protect both your sensibilities (you can control what you see) and your security: Outlook will block some attachments, and it won't download images unless you specify that you want it to.
Although this enforced blocking makes file sharing less convenient, you should be aware that you can still use e-mail to share any file type with trusted friends and colleagues—you'll just need to take a few extra steps for the sake of enhanced security. For more information about ways to send and receive attached files, see “About unblocking attachments” at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP073264181033.aspx.
By default, Outlook does not download pictures in HTML messages in order to lessen these risks. (If you want to change this default setting, use the Change Automatic Download Settings command that's shown in the picture. There is more information in the Quick Reference Card at the end of this course).
If you are sure that you always want to see pictures in e-mail from a particular sender, you can add that name or Internet domain to your Safe Senders list right from the e-mail message. Outlook will then download pictures in e-mail messages sent from that person or domain. To show pictures in the message, right-click any picture or click the text at the top of the message. Note: Pictures are blocked only when they're the type that are downloaded into an HTML e-mail message by calling the picture information from an outside computer. This is how an organization might add pictures kept on their own computer to a newsletter or to an advertisement sent to you in e-mail. Pictures that you attach to a message, or that your friend attaches to a message and sends to you, would not be blocked by this feature.
If you're willing to forgo the benefits of color, useful formatting, and other niceties, you could benefit from greater peace of mind. Plain Text format offers you privacy, security, and the simplest possible text styles in a message (if that's what you happen to like).
Here's why: Even though you don't view the message using HTML or RTF, Outlook stores this formatting information for you in case you change your mind later. To read the messages you receive in Plain Text format, select the Read all standard mail in plain text check box (in the E-mail Options dialog box).
[ Note to trainer: With Outlook 2003 installed on your computer, you can click the link in the slide to go to an online practice. In the practice, you can work through each of these tasks in Outlook, with instructions to guide you. Important: If you don’t have Outlook 2003, you won’t be able to access the practices.]
Using This Template This Microsoft Office PowerPoint ® template has training content about controlling the format you send and receive e-mail messages in. It's geared for a corporate trainer to present to a group and customize as necessary. This template's content is adapted from the Microsoft Office Online Training course “Control how you send and see mail messages.” Features of the template Title slide: On the very first slide, there are empty brackets over which you should type the name of your company. Or you can delete the text box altogether if you don't want this text. Animations: Custom animation effects are applied throughout. They'll play in previous versions back to Microsoft PowerPoint 2000. They include the entrance effects called Peek and Stretch , and sometimes the Dissolve effect is used. To alter them, go to the Slide Show menu, click Custom Animation , and work with the options that appear. Slide transitions: The Wipe Down transition is applied throughout the show. If you want a different one, go to the Slide Show menu, click Slide Transition , and work with the options that appear. Hyperlinks to online course: The template contains links to the online version of this training course. The links take you to the hands-on practice session for each lesson and to the Quick Reference Card that is published for this course. Please take note: You must have Outlook 2003 installed to view the hands-on practice sessions. Headers and footers: The template contains a footer that has the course title. You can change or remove the footers in the Header and Footer dialog box (which opens from the View menu).
![Course contents ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],Control how you send and see e-mail messages Each lesson includes a list of suggested tasks and a set of test questions.](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)