Get all the latest Computing Tips from our RSS feed

Message Options in Outlook

When writing a new email message, users have several options that can be applied to the message. To turn on these options, the Message Options Dialog Box is the place to look! Options included are Setting the Importance and Sensitivity of a message, setting up voting and tracking options, delivery options such as "Do not deliver before:", and "expires after". This tip will show and explain how the various features of the Message Options Dialog Box work.

Remember, if you have ideas for the Computing Tip of the Week,please send them to Pat Fellows.

Accessing the Message Options Dialog Box

While in a new message, click on Options button on the Standard Toolbar.

If the button is not visible, it will need to be added to the toolbar. Click on the arrow at the end of that toolbar and select "Add or Remove Buttons>Standard>Options. See image below.

This will open the Message Options Dialog Box. There are three main areas that will be addressed here, Message settings, Voting and Tracking options, and Delivery options.

Message Settings

Message settings provides users with options to set both the importance and sensitivity of a message. Importance can be set as High Importance, Normal and Low. Sensitivity of a message can be set as shown below.

It is important with both of these settings to not use them on every email sent. If a user sets all messages at "High Importance" the recipients of the messages will begin to ignore the that appears next to the message in the Inbox. When a message is sent with a Sensitivity setting, that message is shown in the Reading Pane and the message itself. An example is shown below with the message outlined in red.

A word about Security Settings: at this time the UW Colleges is not set up to provide security settings and digital signatures on an institution wide basis.

Voting and Tracking Options

There are three separate options in this area.

Voting Buttons - when a user needs to track responses to a request for information, for example a meal choice, voting buttons are the answer.

Here is an example:

If the user clicks on the down arrow the three default voting buttons appear. To create your own options, type in the options separated by a semi-colon.

Once the options are set, click on Close and send the message to the recipients. It is a good idea to put a note in the subject line to remind recipients to open the message if they don't see the message in the reading pane about clicking on the Infobar. See example below.

User who do not use the Reading Pane will see the following when they open the message.

To track how people have voted, go to the Sent Items folder and find the message you sent with the voting buttons. It will look like the example below. Notice it has a special icon next to the sender's name.

Open the message. There will be a new Tab that is labeled Tracking. Click on that tab and it will show how recipients have responded and keep a running total for each option.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: When a user sends a message that includes voting buttons it is critical that the sent message is left in the Sent Items Folder. If that message is moved to another folder it will not keep track of the votes. The votes will still come in, but they won't be tallied or appear in the original sent message.

Request a delivery or read receipt for this message: If this is checked, the recipient will see the following with it referring to the message as a delivery or read receipt. This example is for a read receipt. Notice that the recipient has the option to not respond that they received read receipts in the future.

The sender will receive a message in the Inbox that looks like one of the images below. Also shown are the messages the sender receives.

Here is a Delivery Receipt.

Note the special icon, a green arrow.

The body of the message looks like this:

Here is a Read Receipt.

Note the special icon for this type of message, a green check-mark.

and the body of the message looks like this:

Delivery Options

This section determines how and when messages are delivered, and where they are saved. Here is how each option works:

1. Have replies sent to: This option allows a user to have responses sent to a colleague along in addition to the original sender. Click on Select Names, and find the recipient in the GAL, or type their email in the text box.
2. Save sent message to: By default all sent items are saved to the Sent Items folder. If the user wants to keep all emails, both sent and received in a special folder, the user can click on Browse and select the folder the message should be saved to.
3. Do not deliver before: Users can write messages and set the delivery time and date for a future time and date. One caution with this is that in the past, I have found the message gets delivered to the recipient's Inbox at the correct time and date, but is filed in the Inbox under the creation time and date. So if I create a message today and set it to be delivered in a week. It will appear in the recipient's mailbox dated today. I tested it just now and it worked as it should, but in the past it wasn't working right. Could be a Microsoft bug that they finally fixed.
4. Expires after: I like to use food announcements as an example here. If a users sends out an announcement that there are cookies in the treat area on campus, those cookies won't be there more than a day, it that. So this is a good message to set an Expires After: date and time. What happens when the message expires is it will look like this:
5. Attachment Format: This should be left on the default setting: Default.
6. Encoding: This should be left on the default setting: Auto-Select.

It is important to note that several of these options, like voting, tracking, and delivery options may not work if you are sending them to users not using Outlook Exchange. They will get the message, but the buttons or other function of the message may not work.

Contacts and Categories

The Contacts button allows users to tie a specific mail message to a contact in their Contact folder. When the recipient opens the message and then clicks on View>Options they will see the contact name. If they double click on the contact, they can see the contact information.

The Categories button allows users to assign a category to a message. There is a master category list, but new categories can also be added by the sender. These can be used at a later date for sorting, grouping or filtering messages.