Autofill, Importance, and Email Format

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About this lesson

Learn the office protocol for marking emails as important, using Plain vs HTML text, and how Autofill addresses really work.

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2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

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Autofill, Importance, and Email Format.docx
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Quick reference

AutoFill, Importance, Email format

These three topics are small but important to understand when working in a new email message.

When to use

Autofill appears on the To: line.

Importance suggests your message is serious.

Email format is sometimes determined by the corporation you work for.

Instructions

AutoFill

  • When any letter is typed into the To: line, a list of previously typed email addresses will appear.
  • This is not connected in any way to the Contacts or People data. It is simply a list of email addresses.
  • To delete one, click the “X” beside it to keep this list cleaned up.

Importance

  • Use the “High Importance” button sparingly and only when your message is very important. If it is used on all of your messages, no one will take you seriously when you need their attention on an email.
  • Low importance is the exact opposite. If you don’t think it is important, then nobody else will. Use this sparingly as well.
  • When used and the email arrives in the recipient’s inbox, it will include either of these symbols at the left side.

Message Format


  • In a new email message, click the “Format Text” ribbon.
  • You are able to change the format of the email to HTML (optimum for font formatting and can be read by most e-readers), Plain Text (no formatting but can be read by all email services), or to Rich Text which can contain formatting, but designed specifically for MS Outlook and MS Exchange.
  • Unless your employer instructs otherwise, typically HTML is the chosen format for emails.
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  • 00:05 All right, this is a quick lesson covering three separate topics.
  • 00:08 They're small topics, but they really are important.
  • 00:11 We're going to talk about Autofill addresses versus Contacts, High versus
  • 00:15 Low Importance, and then HTML versus Plain Text or Rich Text, here we go.
  • 00:19 The autofill addresses, first of all I am in a brand new email, okay?
  • 00:23 And I'm on my Message ribbon and over here in the middle it says names and
  • 00:27 it has my address book.
  • 00:28 I'm going to click this because my address book is my contact list or my people list,
  • 00:32 all right?
  • 00:33 So when I click Address book as you can see I have got two names in there.
  • 00:37 That's it, just 2, not 20, just 2.
  • 00:39 I'm going to hit Cancel, I'm going to show you the next part.
  • 00:43 When you're typing a brand new email and
  • 00:45 in Outlook 2019 you simply need to click once in this To line, this empty To line,
  • 00:50 click and it will show you all the recent people.
  • 00:52 Now notice, one, two, three, four, five.
  • 00:54 Well, you saw my contact list only had two.
  • 00:57 Why are there five people on this list?
  • 00:59 Because these are two separate entities, all right?
  • 01:02 Your To line has nothing to do with your contacts and
  • 01:04 this will frustrate you because everyone thinks that they're tied together.
  • 01:09 They are not, they're completely separate.
  • 01:11 So when you're upgrading Outlook you wonder well,
  • 01:13 where did my list of people go?
  • 01:15 When I click on here, you have to rebuild it.
  • 01:17 You basically have start retyping these names, it is what it is.
  • 01:21 Well, notice this list, the second one is a wrong address, I purposely set that up.
  • 01:25 Well, the way to get rid of these is not to go into your contacts but
  • 01:28 to actually notice that when I float my mouse on this a little X shows
  • 01:32 up on the right-hand side.
  • 01:34 That X, of course, the tool tip says, Delete.
  • 01:36 You just have to get your eyes over there to notice an X is shown.
  • 01:39 So if you do have any incorrect emails on this list, get over here,
  • 01:44 delete it, it's gone, there we go, move on.
  • 01:47 All right, let's go to the next one high versus low importance.
  • 01:50 This is also on the Message ribbon, of a brand new email,
  • 01:52 on the right hand side it says High Importance, Low Importance.
  • 01:55 It is rare that I'll hit High Importance, and in my opinion,
  • 01:58 it better be important for me to click that.
  • 02:01 And Low Importance, I actually received an email once that was marked Low Importance,
  • 02:05 and I thought, well, if the person sending it didn't think it was important,
  • 02:08 why would I waste time reading it?
  • 02:10 Please, never click Low Importance on your own emails and
  • 02:13 don't abuse the High Importance, okay?
  • 02:16 After a while people won't take you seriously.
  • 02:18 All right, and the final part is the HTML versus Plain Text or Rich Text.
  • 02:23 What does all that mean?
  • 02:24 Well, let me show you.
  • 02:26 HTML means Hypertext Markup Language, which means I can assign colors and
  • 02:31 fonts and formats to my message, okay?
  • 02:34 I can make it all fancy.
  • 02:37 When I send it via HTML, all these pretty colors will follow.
  • 02:40 I can also click behind my website, hit Enter and
  • 02:43 now I hyperlink which will follow the email.
  • 02:46 But some companies, some large corporations,
  • 02:49 will not allow HTML format to come in because, as you can see,
  • 02:53 a hyperlink might hyperlink to a bad website.
  • 02:55 It might be a virus website, they are not going to take that risk, so
  • 02:59 they will basically wipe it clean and will only receive plain text.
  • 03:03 Now, keep your eyes on the text down here,
  • 03:06 I'm going to come up to my Format Text ribbon.
  • 03:08 Over here on the left hand side it says HTML Plain Text.
  • 03:12 I'm about to hit Plain Text, get your eyes down on all the color and
  • 03:16 the hyperlink, click, and hit Continue.
  • 03:19 There you go, wiped clean, wiped clean.
  • 03:22 So if you're sending email into a corporation, don't waste your time doing
  • 03:25 all the fancy formats, they're probably wiping it off up there anyway.
  • 03:28 All right, the next one is Rich Text.
  • 03:31 What is Rich Text?
  • 03:31 Well, it is one more level of protection for that company from attachments.
  • 03:37 Attachments have been known for years to carry viruses with them, so
  • 03:40 it's just one more level of protection.
  • 03:42 So the Rich Text will actually take this attachment off the attachment line and
  • 03:47 put it inside the actual message.
  • 03:50 So I'm going to click Rich Text, and there you can see my attachment line is gone and
  • 03:54 I do have just a symbol, it's simply a picture of an attachment.
  • 03:58 Now, it did travel with, it just didn't come in as an attachment, and
  • 04:02 you have to do a little bit of magic to make it reappear as an attachment, or
  • 04:06 ask that person to share that file a different way.
  • 04:10 So every once in a while when someone calls me, Andy, I'm trying to attach but
  • 04:13 it's going down into my message instead of on the attach line.
  • 04:16 Well, they're still in the message creation mode.
  • 04:19 The simple answer is, just change it to HTML, click, and
  • 04:23 now it's back on the attachment line.
  • 04:25 All right, thank you.

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