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The Microsoft Outlook E-Mail and Fax Guide
Last Updated 7/27/2009 2:10:28 PM
Chapter 11: Receiving and Responding to Email Messages
This chapter explores the Outlook Inbox and how you can retrieve your messages and how you can respond to them.
In the previous chapter, we explored Outlook’s techniques for sending messages. Now let’s look at your Inbox and see how to retrieve your messages and how you can respond to them.
GETTING YOUR MESSAGES
Just as with sending messages, getting messages can take place automatically or manually. The methods available depend on the information services in your profile and the type of connection to the mail server. There are both automatic and manual procedures, discussed in the next few sections. For details about the retrieval options available for different services, see the related chapters in Part I.
Automatic Retrieval — Unscheduled and Scheduled
If you connect to Microsoft Exchange Server on a LAN, you don’t have to take any action to get your mail. The Exchange server “pushes” new message headers — containing the subject, sender, and other message properties — to your computer. The message itself remains on the server until you open it. Only at that moment is the full text of the message sent to your computer for you to view.
Scheduled retrieval is most commonly used for any service where you connect remotely and want to receive all incoming messages, instead of selecting messages. Scheduling choices for an individual service may include
- when Outlook starts
- at specified intervals, such as every hour
- at a particular time of day (e.g., at 12:30 p.m., while you’re at lunch)
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Special Note: The Internet E-mail service does not put its scheduling option on the properties for each account. Instead, set the retrieval interval by choosing Tools, Options, then switching to the Internet E-mail tab. Select “Check for new messages every xx minute(s)” and set the desired interval. Also, Internet E-mail supports scheduled connections only when you configure it for a LAN connection, not for a dial-up connection. See “Scheduled Connections” in Chapter 6 for details. |
Not all services support all these scheduling options.
Manual Retrieval — Check for New Mail or Remote Mail
There are two ways to retrieve your messages manually. From within Outlook, press F5 or use Tools, Check for New Mail to retrieve all pending messages from the services you’ve selected (see “Using Check for New Mail” in Chapter 10). At the same time, this action sends any messages waiting in your Outbox. You can also use Tools, Check for New Mail On if you have more than one service in your profile and want to choose which one(s) to check.
The other manual method is using Tools, Remote Mail. Remote Mail gives you more control over which messages you download and whether a copy is left on the server. See Chapter 12 for more details.
Synchronization
Microsoft Exchange Server users also can use Tools, Synchronize to get and send messages. See “Synchronizing Mailbox and Public Folders” in Chapter 12 for more information.
New Message Notification Options
How do you know when you have new mail? First, Outlook must be running; you won’t receive any notice of new messages until you start Outlook. One indicator that a new message has arrived is an envelope icon that appears in the system tray on the Windows taskbar. (See Figure 11.1.)
You can also check the Inbox. When you switch to the Inbox, the status bar at the bottom of the Outlook window shows the total items and the number unread. The number of unread messages also is shown in parentheses next to the folder name in the Outlook Bar and in the Folder List. Note that these numbers are totals and are not affected by any filter active in the Inbox.
Outlook lets you decide how to be notified of new mail. Choose Tools, Options to display the dialog box shown in Figure 11.2. Under “When new items arrive” on the E-mail tab, you have these choices:
- Play a sound
- Briefly change the mouse cursor
- Display a notification message
If you choose “Play a sound,” you can change the New Mail Notification sound in the Sounds applet in the Control Panel. (See “Changing the New Mail Notification Sound” at the end of this chapter.) You can also use the Rules Wizard (see Chapter 17) to set up custom notifications for different types of messages.
READING NEW MESSAGES
New messages appear in the Inbox folder in bold with a closed envelope icon. Messages you have read are in the normal font with an open envelope icon.
To read a message, double-click it, or select it and press Enter. The message opens in a message window (Figure 11.3) similar to that used to compose new messages, but with the formatting toolbar turned off. To open several messages at once, select the messages in the Information Viewer by holding down the Ctrl key, then press Enter, or choose File, Open.
Instead of a Send button, the message window’s toolbar includes buttons for Reply, Reply to All, and Forward. Two other new buttons let you browse through other messages in the same message window without returning to the Viewer. The large up arrow opens the previous item, while the large down arrow opens the next item. Click the small arrow next to each of the large arrows for additional browsing choices, as shown in Figure 11.4.
To switch the To, Cc, and Subject fields on and off, choose View, Message Header.
If you add a preview pane to Outlook (described under “For More Information” at the end of Chapter 9), you don’t need to open most messages. You can read the text in the preview pane.
You can do a number of things with the messages in your Inbox (and other message folders). We covered these basic actions under “Working with Items” in Chapter 9:
- print
- delete
- copy or move to another folder
- save
- mark with categories
Under “Categories and Message Flags” in Chapter 10, we looked at how to add a follow-up message flag to a message.
In this section, we add to your message handling skills by learning how to
- view the Internet headers
- work with file attachments
- link to Internet resources
- add addresses to the Contacts folder or the Personal Address Book
- reply to or forward a message
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