Microsoft Outlook 2010 Tutorials
E-mail Basics / Formatting an E-mail Message
Subtitles of the Movie (Microsoft Outlook 2010 / E-mail Basics / Formatting an E-mail Message)
Many of your E-mail messages will be very simple. Just text with no need for any formatting other than pressing Enter to place a blank line between paragraphs or perhaps using Tab to indent text. When we need to dress things up a bit, however, it's easy to do so and if you're familiar with Word it's even easier. Now I'm going to click the New E-mail button and I'll do a quick address here - you learned how to address your messages in another lesson - and I'll give it a Subject line. Now rather than watch me type this I'm going to paste some text. Now once you have your text in place and I suggest typing it all first rather than typing and formatting as you go, once your content is typed you have all of these formatting tools at your disposal. Here on the Message tab you can choose from the Basic Text section to change the font of your message, the font size, you can use the big A and the little A here, these two buttons, to increase your font size incrementally rather than having to click the Font Size button and make a selection here. So, for example, if I want to make the title of the message, this Important Message text here, bigger I can just select it and then hit the big A and notice the font's getting bigger and bigger in 2-point increments. Now if that's too big I can back it down with the little A until it's just the right size. I could have used the drop-list for the font and chosen a size there. Notice as I mouse over the numbers it gives me a little preview. So I'll go back to 14 and leave it there. I can click a single button and make something bold. I can created a bulleted list. For example, I'm going to turn this paragraph: Please bring your current staff list, blah, blah, blah, into a list, so I'm going to say Please bring and put a colon in here and then hit the Enter key and then I'm going to get rid of the commas and just put in a hard return, or press the Enter key, in between. OK, so I have Please bring: your current staff list - I'll add the word here; your department's projects list; any inventory for your department - get rid of that period - and then hit the Enter key and I can start a new paragraph. So all the same tools - Enter, Backspace, Delete - all those same functions that you would do in Word to compose a document are going to work here and once I've broken that paragraph out into a list I can select it and then just go up and hit the Bullet button. I can change the color of text. Let me do required, that would make more sense and I'll make that red. I could choose another color from this Palette but I'm going to stick with red because I'm trying to say it's required and so I've a bulleted list, I have my font changed, the size of the text has changed. Now, if you want more options you can go to Format Text. You see a lot of the same buttons but you also have Strikethrough, Subscript and Superscript. You also have Paragraph formatting tools, Bulleting, Numbering as you had on the Message tab, Outlining, Alignment tools as I said, Left, Center, Right and Full Justify, so you have more tools at your disposal. You can also use a, apply a Fill Color to a paragraph or line or just a word, like so. Notice that it made the text white when I chose a dark color for the Fill. You can apply Styles choosing from Quick Styles like these and notice that it, as I mouse over them, it shows me how they will look. I can Change Styles choosing a Style Set - Elegant, Fancy, Formal - as I mouse over them it gives me a little preview. I can choose different colors, different fonts and this just shows them more graphically than they would appear from this list up here. I can adjust Paragraph Spacing and if I want to set the current formatting in place for the selected text as my default I can click Set as Default. Do that with care, however. Make sure that whatever formatting's in place at your cursor or whatever's selected is literally something you would want to be the default for all new messages. So, you can increase the font Size, change it, apply Color, apply formatting like Bold, Italic and Underline. You can change your Alignment. Here I'm going to center this list, this Bulleted List. All of these tools are at your disposal. Here on the Format Text tab or on the Message tab for a slightly smaller set of tools. Now, once you like how everything looks you can go ahead and send it. One other thing to bear in mind on the Format Text tab is before you send it think about your recipient. Typically messages go out as HTML. You can also use Rich Text which allows for formatting like we've done. Sometimes HTML formatted messages will trigger junk filters for your recipient so if you've had that problem with someone in the past you might want to switch over to Rich Text. If you choose Plain Text all of your formatting will be stripped out and a very plain, simple, no formatting, no bolding, no nothing message will be sent. Once you like how it looks, however, and have all of your formatting in place as you desire it go ahead and hit Send and your message is ready to go.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Microsoft Outlook 2010 |
| Author: | Laurie Ulrich Fuller |
| SKU: | 34166 |
| ISBN: | 1-936334-54-2 |
| Release Date: | 2010-10-05 |
| Duration: | 7 hrs / 89 lessons |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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