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10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Exchange 5.0

- Lesson 7 -
Composing and Sending Messages

 

In this lesson, you learn how to compose a message, identify all recipients of the message, and send the message.

Composing a Message

Composing an e-mail message is similar to writing a letter and sending it to someone via the United States Postal Service. You create text, you address it with an accurate address, and sometimes you even write a note on the envelope to indicate something special about the contents inside, such as "personal" or "urgent."

The biggest difference between e-mail and USPS mail is the speed at which your message is delivered to the recipient. After you use e-mail and get used to its almost instantaneous delivery system, you'll begin to understand why computer users have adopted the jargon "snail mail" for mail sent through the USPS.

To compose a message in Microsoft Exchange Client, you carry out the following three steps, all of which are quite easy:

1. Fill out the message header

2.
Write the message

3.
Send the message


Message Header The message header is the top part of the message form, where you insert the name(s) of the recipient, the subject, and other information about the message. The header information appears in the message recipient's Inbox.

Creating the Message Header

The message header typically includes all the recipients of the message and the subject of the message. When you receive a message, you see the header information in your Inbox.

You can receive a message in any of these three ways:

  • You can be the primary recipient, in which case your name is listed in the To: text box of the message.

  • You can receive a carbon copy (or Cc) of the message, in which case your name(s) is listed in the Cc: text box of the message. (Names listed in the Cc: text box appear in the message window of each recipient.)

  • You can receive a blind carbon copy (Bcc) of the message. In this case, your name does not appear in the message window at all. Primary and Cc recipient(s) do not know that anyone received a blind carbon copy.

Be Precise If you type the name of the recipient, make sure you spell it exactly as it appears in the address list. If a name cannot be matched to a display name, Exchange alerts you that the user does not exist and gives you the option of creating the user or choosing an alternative user with a similar name.

The subject of your message is also very important because recipients can use it to search through messages when looking for specific information. In fact, if you save the messages you send, it can also help you on those occasions when you might have a need to search for a particular subject. There also may be occasions when either you or the recipients need to gather similar messages and want to sort them so that messages with similar subjects are listed together. Therefore, try to make your wording as relevant and specific as you can. For example, entering "Peterson Supermarket Construction Project Budget" is better than "Notes about the budget for the project."

To create a header for a new message, follow these steps:

1. Click the New Message button on the toolbar (or choose Compose, New Message). The New Message dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 7.1.

Figure 7.1 The New Message dialog box.

2. The insertion point is positioned in the To text box by default. Enter the names of the primary recipients, using one of the following methods:

  • Type the name(s), separating multiple recipients with semicolons (;).

  • Click the To button to display the Address Book dialog box (see Figure 7.2). Choose an address list from the drop-down list at the top. Then click the name of each recipient you want to add and click the To button to add it to the recipient list.

Figure 7.2 The Address Book dialog box.


Check Your Entries If you opt to type the names into the recipient boxes, you must be careful to enter each name exactly as it appears in the address list. To be sure you haven't made a mistake, after you enter the names you can choose Check Names from the Tools menu. Exchange matches each typed entry against the list of known mailboxes and notifies you if there's an entry that has no match (and offers a suggested alternative). When the entry is confirmed, it becomes underlined.



Last Name First? Don't worry about entering the last name first (or vice versa), even if your address list is established differently. Exchange figures it out. The To box displays the recipient the way your address book has it.


3.
When you finish inserting recipients, click OK.

4.
(Optional) To send a carbon copy to a recipient, type the name(s) in the Cc text box, or double-click the Cc button and enter the name(s) using the Address Book dialog box in the same way you entered primary recipients (refer to Figure 7.2).

5.
(Optional) If you want to send a blind carbon copy (Bcc) of the message to a recipient, choose View, Bcc Box. A new field appears below the Cc box. Click the Bcc button to display an address list from which you can select recipients (using the same method you did to enter primary and Cc recipients).

6.
In the Subject text box, enter the subject, or topic, of this message. After you enter the subject, the title bar of the New Message window changes to show the subject of your message.

Entering the Message Text

After you fill out all the Header information, you can start typing your message. When you start entering text, you'll notice that the formatting toolbar in the message window becomes active (the buttons are no longer grayed out). This is just like using a word processor, and all those toolbar features are available to you. You will learn about them in Lesson 9.


WordMail If you have Microsoft Word, you can use it as your message editor. The To, Cc, and Subject functions work the same, but the message text can be formatted using all of the features available to Word. To make Word your e-mail editor, choose WordMail Options from the Compose menu of the Exchange Client. In the WordMail Options dialog box, make sure the Enable Word As E-Mail Editor check box is checked.

Assigning Importance

You can indicate the priority of a message before you send it. You might want to change the priority of a message for reasons such as these:

  • Recipients who get a lot of e-mail generally read high priority messages first.

  • You may want to indicate to a busy recipient that this particular message is of minimal or low importance and, therefore, does not have to be read immediately.

  • When your Microsoft Exchange Server system is very busy, it can be configured to move high-priority messages through the system first.

There are three priority choices: high, normal, and low. Normal is the default and requires no special action. High priority messages are marked with a red exclamation point in the recipient's Inbox. Low priority messages are marked with a blue downward-pointing arrow. Normal priority messages have no special markings.

If you want to indicate high or low priority for a message, follow these steps:

1. In the New Message window, open the View menu and select Toolbar to insert a message window toolbar above the formatting toolbar.

2.
Click the exclamation point button to assign a high priority to the message, or click the downward-pointing arrow button to assign a low priority.

Sending the Message

When you complete your message, it's time to send it. You can send it immediately, or you can specify that you want to send it at a later time.

  • To send the message right away, click the Send button (or choose File, Send or press Ctrl+Enter).

  • If you want to delay sending the message, choose File, Send Options to display the Send Options dialog box (see Figure 7.3). Click the In option, enter a number, and choose whether you want the message to be sent in that number of minutes, hours, days, or weeks.

Figure 7.3 You can specify the amount of time that elapses before the message is sent.

If you delay sending the message, a copy is placed in the Outbox folder of your mailbox. If you change your mind about sending it, you can delete it from the Outbox. If you want to change the Send options, you can select the message in the Outbox folder and choose File, Properties. Then, from the Properties dialog box, you can change the send options. After the message is sent, a copy is placed in the Sent Items folder of your mailbox.

In this lesson, you learned how to compose and send a message. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to attach items such as files to your messages.

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