10 Minute Guide to Outlook 97 - 8 - Creating Mail In this lesson, you learn to compose a message, format text, check your spelling, and send mail. Composing a Message You can send a message to anyone for whom you have an address, whether he or she is in your address book or not. And in addition to sending a message to one or more recipients, you can send copies of a message to others on your address list. (See Lesson 7 for information about addressing a message and sending carbon copies.) To compose a message, follow these steps: 1. In the Outlook Inbox, click the New Mail Message button or choose Compose, New Mail Message. The Untitled - Message window appears (see Figure 8.1). 2. Enter the name of the recipient in the To text box, or click the To... button and select the name of the recipient from your Address Book. (See Lesson 7 for information about the Address Book.) 3. Enter the name of anyone to whom you want to send a copy of the message in the Cc text box, or click the Cc... button and select a name from the Address Book. 4. In the Subject text box, enter the subject of the message. 5. Click in the text area, and then enter the text of the mes-sage. You do not have to press the Enter key at the end of a line; Outlook automatically wraps the text at the end of a line for you. You can use the Delete and Backspace keys to edit the text you enter. 6. When you finish typing the message, you can send the message right away (see "Sending Mail" later in this lesson), or you can check the spelling and formatting as described in the following sections. Figure 8.1 The Untitled - Message window. Panic Button: No Address! If you try to compose a message to someone without entering an address, Outlook displays the Check Names dialog box, in which it asks you to create an address. You can search for the name among the existing addresses, or you can create a new address for the name in much the same way you would create a new entry in the Address Book (see Lesson 7). Formatting Text You can change the format of the text in your message to make it more attractive, to make it easier to read, or to add emphasis. Any formatting you do transfers to the recipient with the message if the recipient has Outlook; however, if the recipient doesn't have Outlook, formatting may not transfer. There are two ways to format text. You can format the text after you type it by selecting it and then choosing a font, size, or other attribute; or you can select the font, size, or other attribute and then enter the text. To format the text in your message, follow these steps: 1. If the Formatting toolbar is not showing, choose View, Toolbars, Formatting. Figure 8.2 shows a message with the Formatting Toolbar displayed. Table 8.1 shows the buttons on this toolbar. Figure 8.2 Use the Formatting toolbar to modify the appearance of your message text. 2. To apply a font to the selected or about-to-be-entered text, click the down arrow in the Font box on the Formatting toolbar. Scroll through the font list, if necessary, to view all fonts on the system, and click the font you want to apply to the text. Quick Format You can also format text by choosing Format, Font and selecting a font, size, style, and so on from the Font dialog box. You also can assign bullets and alignment to text by choosing Format, Paragraph. Table 8.1 Formatting Toolbar Buttons Button Name Font Font Size Font Color Bold Italic Underline Align Left Center Align Right Bullets Decrease Indent Increase Indent 3. Assign a size by clicking the down-arrow beside the Font Size drop-down list and choosing the size; alternatively, you can enter a size in the Font Size text box. 4. To choose a color, click the Font Color tool button and select a color from the palette box that appears. 5. Choose a type style to apply to text by clicking the Bold, Italic, or Underline button (or a combination of them) on the Formatting toolbar. 6. Choose an alignment by selecting the Align Left, Center, or Align Right button from the Formatting toolbar. 7. Add bullets to a list by clicking the Bullet button on the Formatting toolbar. 8. Create text indents or remove indents in half-inch increments by clicking the Increase Indent or Decrease Indent buttons. (Each time you click the Indent button, the indent changes by half an inch.) Checking Spelling To make a good impression and to maintain your professional image, you should check the spelling in your mail messages before you send them. Outlook includes a spelling checker you can use for that purpose. And built into that spelling checker is a grammar checker that automatically checks the grammar in your message. To check the spelling in a message, follow these steps: 1. In the open message, choose Tools, Spelling and Grammar or press F7. When the spelling checker finds a word whose spelling it questions, it displays the Spelling dialog box shown in Figure 8.3). If the checker does not find any misspelled words, a dialog box appears, saying the spelling and grammar check is complete; click OK to close the dialog box. Figure 8.3 Check your spelling before sending a message. 2. You can do any of the following in response to the word Outlook questions in the Spelling dialog box: Not in Dictionary Enter the correct spelling in this text box. Suggestions Select the correct spelling in this text box, and it automatically appears in the Change To text box. Ignore Click this button to continue the spelling check without changing this occurrence of the selected word. Ignore All Click this button to continue the spelling check without changing any occurrence of the word in question throughout this message. Change Click this button to change this particular occurrence of the word in question to the spelling in the Change To text box. Change All Click this button to change the word in question to the spelling listed in the Change To text box every time the spelling checker finds the word in this message. Add Click this button to add the current spelling of the word in question to the dictionary so that Outlook will not question future occurrences of this spelling. Undo Last Click this button to reverse the last spelling change you made, thus returning the word to its original spelling. Cancel Click this button to quit the spelling check. 3. When the spelling check is complete, Outlook displays a message box telling you it's done. Click OK to close the dialog box. Timesaver Tip: Set Your Spelling Options Click the Options button in the Spelling dialog box to set options that tell Outlook to do such things as ignore words with numbers, ignore original message text in forwarded messages or replies, always check spelling before sending, and so on. Sending Mail When you're ready to send your mail message, do one of the following: Click the Send button. Choose File, Send. Press Ctrl+Enter. Timesaver Tip: AutoSignature Choose Tools, AutoSignature to have Outlook automatically add a message, quotation, or other text at the end of every message you send. Additionally, after you create an autosignature, you can quickly add it to any message by choosing Insert, AutoSignature. Timesaver Tip: Using Windows NT 4.0? You'll need to check your rights and permissions in relation to sending e-mail within your network. Ask your system adminstrator for more information. In this lesson, you learned to compose a message, format text, check your spelling, and send mail. In the next lesson, you'll learn to set mail options and how to tell if the recipient has received your message.

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