Specifying Advanced E-Mail Options

Outlook includes a selection of advanced options so that you can manage your e-mail most effectively. To avoid losing your work, you can choose to have Outlook automatically save messages you have created but not yet sent. When new messages arrive, you can choose to have Outlook alert you by playing a sound, briefly changing the mouse pointer to an envelope icon, showing an envelope icon in the notification area, or any combination of these effects. You can also set default options for sending a message. For example, if you are concerned about privacy, you might choose to set the sensitivity of all new messages to Private.

In this exercise, you will review the types of settings you can control, save message drafts more frequently, specify how Outlook saves messages, what happens when new messages arrive, and which options are used when sending messages. There are no practice files for this exercise.

BE SURE TO display your Inbox before beginning this exercise.

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.

   The Options dialog box opens.

   

   From this dialog box, you can control the settings and appearance of many Outlook features, including the following:

   • E-mail accounts, functionality, and formatting

   • Editorial and archive functions

   • The Outlook Panes (Navigation Pane, Reading Pane, and the To-Do Bar)

   • Your calendar, tasks list, contact list, and notes

   • The Journal

   • The indexing and search functions

   • The new telephone and voice mail functions

2. On the Preferences tab, click E-mail Options, and then in the E-mail Options dialog box, click Advanced E-mail Options.

   

3. In the Save messages area, with the AutoSave items every check box selected, replace the number in the minutes box with 1.

   Every minute, Outlook will save any message that you are composing but have not yet sent in your Drafts folder. In the event of a computer crash-for example, if you experience a power failure, or your toddler turns off your computer-you won't lose more than one minute's worth of work.

4. In the When new items arrive in my Inbox area, clear the Briefly change the mouse cursor check box.

   Outlook will alert you to the arrival of new messages by sounding a chime and displaying a desktop alert. If you haven't activated a message since the most recent message was received, an envelope icon appears in the notification area at the right end of the Windows taskbar.

   See Also For more information about desktop alerts, see "Working with New Mail Notifications" in Chapter 4, "Handling E-Mail Messages."

5. In the When sending a message area, click the Set importance arrow, and then in the list, click High.

   You'll see the effect of this setting later in this exercise.

6. Select the Allow comma as address separator check box.

   Enabling this option allows Outlook to recognize commas as well as semicolons as separators between names or addresses in the To, Cc, or Bcc boxes. This very convenient option should (in this author's opinion) be set by default! For some reason, this has not been the case in any version of Outlook to date.

   

7. Take note of the other available options (and make any changes you want). Then click OK in each of the open dialog boxes to close them and save your changes.

8. On the Standard toolbar, click the New Mail Message button.

   A new message window opens. On the Message tab, in the Options group, the High Importance button is active, indicating that the message will be flagged as high priority. This probably isn't a setting you want to keep, but it's a good visible indication of the changes you made to the e-mail options.

   

9. Close the message window. If prompted to save it, click No.

10. On the Tools menu, click Options. Click E-mail Options, and then click Advanced E-mail Options.

11. In the Advanced E-mail Options dialog box, in the Set importance list, click Normal.

    By default, new messages will now be normal priority. You can set an individual message to high or low priority by clicking the High Importance or Low Importance button in the Options group on the Message tab of the message window.

12. Select or clear any other options you want, and then click OK in each of the open dialog boxes to close them and save your changes.