WIN's MS Outlook Email Stationary

DIY - a motto appealing and applicable to many Namibian Internet and Information Technology users! Do-it-yourself email stationary is easier than you might think, if using Microsoft Outlook and WIN's free web backgrounds.

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The standard email stationary - black font on white background - is still serving a-million-and-one good purposes especially in business environments and where quick information exchanges are required. Black-on-white is easy to print too, and it helps keeping the file sizes of emails as small as possible.
In our still bandwidth-deprived Namibian Internet landscape, sticking to the basics is always good advice.

BUT HEY, there are also dear friends and families, special occasions to celebrate, not to forget about holidays such as Christmas and Independence Day. These certainly deserve a bit of cheerfulness and doing something different, right? RIGHT! So that's why you should know how to make your Outlook E-mail Stationary look great! If only there were not so many options, you might lament...

Your 1st priority is to keep your emails at low KB, if you and the recipients are on dial-up connections to the Internet, and even more so where low-capacity telephone lines are involved in addition to that. Staying considerate of such circumstances at all times will help keeping your loved ones close, as spending a small fortune on downloading your emails is not exactly the average person's favourite hobby.
Don't despair - solutions are readily at hand:

Option A:
In Microsoft Outlook, click on "Action" in the menu bar, select "New mail using..." and then "More stationary". A new window will open and present you with a list of stationary options to choose from. Take your pick, hit the OK button and you are done - as easy as that! Once the email window displaying the stationary you selected is open you start typing and formatting the text as usual.

UPDATE Dec 2007:

Unfortunately, the Microsoft Corporation found it necessary to remove some features and functionalities of Outlook with the release of MS Office 2007.
The function described in Option B does not exist anymore at all, others can still be found but require using different buttons on the re-designed tool bars of Outlook 2007.
New features added are not yet covered here either, and it remains to be seen whether Office 2009 (?) will be revised once again. So, if you already work with Outlook 2007, please do not dismiss our email decoration guidelines just yet - they may eventually apply again ...

However, please keep in mind that the following descriptions refer to Outlook as available in MS Office versions OLDER THAN THE 2007 EDITION!  

Just as user-friendly is Option B:
You received an email on stationary you are particular fond of and would like to make it available for future own use in Outlook. No problem at all - open the email, click on "File" in the menu bar and select "Save stationary..." to open a window that will allow you to add the stationary to the existing collection.
Enter a name for the stationary under No. 1 in the window and click on the OK button. Done again!
You can now select the newly saved stationary for any email and whenever you want, following the steps described in Option A.

Now let's take a look at a slightly more advanced Option C:
Another way of creating nice-looking yet low-KB email stationary is possible with the help of Outlook's background decoration feature. It is applied to emails directly and individually and provides opportunities for giving each email a different appearance. In also contains options for applying textures and images as backgrounds.

Step 1: Open a new standard email template as usual, type in the recipient's email address and fill in the subject line also as usual - then click on the main body of the email, where you will type the text.

Step 2: Click "Format" in the menu bar and select "Background", which will open a panel from which you can choose any of the following: "No fill" (on top), a range of pre-set colours, and underneath the colour palette "More colours..." as well as "Fill effects...".

If you click on "No fill", the panel will close and you are left with your email unchanged.

Click on any of the pre-set colours and your email background will be displayed in the chosen solid colour. Use the "un-do" button to revert to a white background or open the colour palette again as described above to select a different colour. 

Step 3: To apply a colour not available from the pre-set palette, click on "More colours..." and choose a colour from the colour wheel displayed under the "Standard" tab.

By clicking on the "Custom" tab in the same window, you access the full range of colours available. Click anywhere on the colours to select your favourite one. The sliding triangle to the right of the colour display allows making your chosen colour appear lighter or darker.

By changing the numbers under the "Red", "Green" and "Blue" values at the bottom of the window, you can mix a colour to your own preferences. Just try it - nothing can go wrong; if you "OK"-ed your colour choice but don't like how it looks in your email, simply use "UNDO" again until you find what you are looking for.

Step 4: Once you found the right colour, you can further change its appearance by selecting "Fill effects..." (under Format → Background). The next window allows to apply the colour in various gradients and directions, and even to add a second colour. Again, don't be shy, simply play around and see what happens when you click on the different options. Everything can be undone again here too.

There are three more tabs in the "Fill effects" window: "Texture", "Pattern" and "Picture". The first two are almost self-explanatory - click on any one texture or pattern you like, then OK, and your email will show the selection.

How to work with pictures for fill effects of email backgrounds is explained in Step 5:
Start with Step 1 and Step 2 above, select "Fill effects..." and then click on the tab named "Picture". Click on the button called "Select Picture" which will take you straight to the folder "My Pictures" that comes as a pre-set folder with all newer versions of Microsoft Office. (If you saved your photos somewhere else on your computer, use "Look in:" on top of the open window to find the correct location/folder first). Click on the photo you would like to use as email background to select it, - remember to choose one with a small file size, preferably not larger than 30-60KB(!) -, then click the "Insert" button (bottom right).

This will take you back to the window where you started off selecting a picture and the selected image will now be displayed in the window. If you are happy with your choice, click the OK button and you will immediately see the photo applied as background of your email. With a bit of exercise this entire process will only take a few seconds ... so go ahead and try!
You can undo the fill effect any time or choose another photo by taking the same steps again.

If you do have a ready-made "My Pictures" folder on your computer, we strongly recommend its use to store all your photos, as there are numerous other functions in Microsoft Windows & Microsoft Office that are pre-set to access this folder directly. You may create subfolders under "My Pictures" and name or re-name them as you like to help you keep order in a big photo collection - BUT PLEASE NEVER RE-NAME the "My Pictures" folder!

Now let's go back to the backgrounds we made available on this website under our FREE STUFF - select any of them, left-click on the image to open it to full size in a new window, then right-click on the image and select "Save picture as...". Save it under the folder "My Pictures" (or any of its sub-folders) on your computer.

Then open a new email in MS Outlook and apply it as a fill effect to your e-mail's background as explained above. ENJOY!

... And in case you wonder why WIN's free web backgrounds look truly stunning compared to many others then you discovered the reason why Web-doS in Namibia should also be YOUR PREFERRED PARTNER in meeting your particular graphic & web design as well as your Internet marketing & publication requirements - regardless of whether you are based in Namibia, Southern Africa or elsewhere in the world, and whether you need assistance in design- and web-related matters for business or private purposes.
Contact web-it@iway.na to find out more.

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