Answering and Forwarding E-mail
You answer e-mails by replying to them, and you can also forward them to other people. Replying to an e-mail automatically addresses the reply to the e-mail's sender. If the original e-mail was sent to more than one person, you can choose to reply to only the sender or to all the original recipients of the e-mail in addition to the sender. You can also add or remove recipients from the e-mail after you begin the reply or forward.
When you are finished entering any text or changing settings for the e-mail, send the replied to or forwarded e-mail by clicking Send on the toolbar of the open e-mail or press the key combination Ctrl+Enter.
Using Reply and Reply to All
To reply to an e-mail, click Reply on the Standard toolbar when the e-mail is selected in the Inbox or select Actions, Reply. Another way to reply to an e-mail is to right-click a selected e-mail in the Inbox and then select Reply. To reply to an open e-mail, select Reply in the open e-mail's toolbar. Figure 3.5 shows a reply to an e-mail with the subject Work on the RM project - Important.
RE: is always added in front of the original subject of an e-mail when you reply. If the e-mail you reply to is part of a conversation (where related messages are passed back and forth between sender and receiver multiple times), still only one RE: appears in the subject line no matter how many times the e-mail is replied to.
To reply to all the recipients of an e-mail, click Reply to All on the Standard toolbar when the e-mail is selected in the Inbox or select Actions, Reply to All. Another way to reply to all recipients of an e-mail is to right-click a selected e-mail in the Inbox and then select Reply to All. To reply to all recipients of an open e-mail, select Reply to All in the open e-mail's toolbar. Figure 3.6 shows an e-mail being answered using the Reply to All feature. The original e-mail was addressed to two recipients, and the reply is addressed to the other original recipient as well as to the sender of the original e-mail. The subject of the reply shows the addition of the RE: modifier.
When you have a reply message open, you can add or remove addressees, change the format of the message, select which e-mail account is used to send the reply if you have more than one e-mail account, and change the message options just as you can with a new e-mail message. You will learn about these topics in later sections of this chapter, as well as in Chapter 4. You will learn to work with e-mail formats in "Working with E-mail Formats" later in this chapter.
Figure 3.5 The reply to the original e-mail is already addressed to its sender, and the subject has been modified by the addition of RE: in front of the original subject.
Figure 3.6 Reply to All opens a reply e-mail addressed to all the recipients of the original e-mail.
NOTE
E-mails that are replies don't include any attachments that were included in the original e-mail. This makes sense because all the original recipients of the e-mail received the attachments when they received the original e-mail. The same rule applies to reply to all e-mails.
Forwarding
To forward an e-mail to someone else, select the e-mail in the Inbox and click Forward on the Standard toolbar. You also can select Actions, Forward, or right-click on an item selected in the Inbox and select Forward. In an open e-mail, select Forward on the toolbar in the open e-mail.
When a message is forwarded to other people, the text FW: is added to the message's subject to indicate the message was forwarded. Figure 3.7 shows an e-mail message opened for forwarding.
In most other respects, a forwarded e-mail message is the same as a reply, except that forwarded messages include any attachments that came in the original e-mail. You can add addressees to forwarded messages and change their format and message options just as you can with replies. You will learn about working with e-mail formats later in this chapter, and about setting and changing message options in Chapter 4.
Figure 3.7 Forwarded e-mails include any attachments that were included in the original e-mail.