Outlook 2003 Essential Training

- [Instructor] In Outlook, or any other email application for that matter, messages you create or receive will have statuses attached to them. For example, a message is sent to you and arrives in your inbox. Its status is new until you read it. Then its status changes to read. Messages you create are unsent until you actually hit the send button, at which time you automatically keep a sent copy in your sent items folder. Let's check out the various message statuses in Outlook and we'll start with our inbox.

So currently I'm on the mail button here in my navigation pane, but I'm going to click on inbox and I can do it right here from my list of mail folders. Or I can do it up here where I've got my favorites. This is the exact same inbox no matter which one I click on down here or up here. Now I do have a number of messages in my inbox. But did you notice that I had a number one in brackets up here next to inbox indicating that I had one unread message. So a new message has arrived, it could be an old one even, but I just haven't read it yet.

As I move into the next pane I can see that I have read many of these messages, they have a little envelope icon that looks like it's opened. So I've gone in and read that message. I've read that one. This envelope is not open. And that's a new message I have not read. This older one here has also been read. So these little icons give us a hint at the status and also as we hover over them you can see some information about each message. The date and the time that it was received, and the size of the file. Now I mentioned that when you create a message its status is unsent until you hit the send button.

And if we've sent messages, we keep a copy automatically in the folder called sent items. So let's go over here. We can click on sent items down here, and we do have a shortcut to it up here in our favorite folders. So I'm going to click sent items. And look at that there are two messages here that I have sent. And both of those envelopes are open, so they've been sent. It doesn't necessarily mean that they've been read at the other end, just that I have sent them. And as I click on them in the reading pane I'm seeing the contents of that message. I don't know if you noticed but over here in all mail folders I have drafts and I've got a number here in brackets as well, except this one's green and it's square brackets.

The drafts folder is where you keep messages that you've created but have not yet sent. So if you're creating a lengthy message for example, and you don't have time to complete the entire message, you can start it, save it in your drafts folder, actually as soon as you hit save, it automatically goes there. And then when you've finished the message you hit the send button. It's removed from the drafts folder and a copy is kept in your sent items folder. So let's click on drafts. Look at that there is a message up here that has not been sent, and you'll notice this icon's a little bit different.

We've got a little icon of what looks like a letter, and an open envelope waiting for us to stuff it. So this is an unsent message sitting in our drafts folder. But we're not seeing the reading pane, I wonder if we can turn it on. While we turn the reading pane on from the view menu, down to reading pane and you'll notice, no we can't. We can't choose right, bottom, or even off for that matter. It's automatically off when we're in the drafts folder, why is that? Well if we could see the message, it wouldn't matter, we can't send it.

There's no button here for sending our message. We have to open it up to complete it. So let's double-click the message and if you don't have a message in your sent items folder don't worry about it. Just follow along with me. You can see the status right across the top. This message has not been sent. You can see who it's going to, the subject, there is a bit of text. I could type some more in here. Just type best regards. And I could continue editing this message.

If I don't have time yet to finish it, well I can save it. Hitting the save button keeps that copy in my drafts folder, and it will stay there until I hit this button, the send button, to send it off to my recipient. Well I'm not actually finished with this message, I haven't attached the pictures yet. So I'll get back to this at a later date. All I do is save, and then move up to the top right corner to close this message. And I'm back to my drafts folder view.

And you can see that message is still in there. And its status is still unsent. I know that because it's in my drafts folder and the number one appears next to drafts. Alright let's go back to our inbox now. I'm going to click on inbox up here under favorite folders. And I'm going to click on this message here. If you have a message that you have already read, let's say it's a very important one and you don't want to forget about it. You don't have time to do your email right now, you're going to have to get back to it later. You can mark a message that you've read and because I've got this reading pane open over here on the right-hand side, as soon as I click on a message, it becomes read without actually opening it.

So this is important to know this next little feature. I can mark a read message as unread. In other words, change its status. So even though I've read this message, I want it to appear as though it's a new one. So when I come back later, I won't forget about it. Here's how we do that. We have to go up to the edit menu, and you'll see at the bottom we've got some options here from marking messages as read. So if I've actually got a new one that I don't need to read I can mark it as read. In this case we want to mark one as unread. So that we don't forget about it later when we come back to this.

And I can do it for all of them. Mark them all as read. I'm going to click mark as unread, and control u on the keyboard would do the same thing. And you can see now that the little envelope icon is closed up, it's also bolded, and the number is changed here, next to my inbox. It's changed to a two. So it appears as though I've got two brand new messages that I haven't read yet. Perfect. Perfect if I want to get back to this list later and see it like a new one and possibly not forget about something that might be important in that message.

Alright so this should help you understand a little bit more about the messages you see in all those little tiny icons around indicating the status.