Reading & Replying to Email in OWA - San Diego Unified ...old.sandi.net/dwa/email/readandlearn/jobaids/owa/OWA_Reading_Replying.pdf · OWA – Reading & Replying to Email Version

OWA – Reading & Replying to Email

Version 1.0 • Updated March 14, 2008

This job aid covers the basics of Reading & Replying to Email in OWA (or Outlook Web Access), the tool we use to access district email over the World Wide Web. In this tutorial, we'll learn how to:

• Log in to OWA with our 6-digit EmpID and Password, • Read an eMail message, • Reply to an eMail, • Save a document Attached to an eMail, and • Delete an eMail we're done with.

We'll also learn about the layout of OWA in the Firefox browser (which is virtually the same as it's layout in the Safari web browser).

Outlook Web Access (OWA) – Reading & Replying to Email 1 of 18

Logging In We're starting at the OWA Login page. To log into District Email, follow steps 1 – 3 below.

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2 Type in your Password.

3 Click Log On.

Type in your 6 digit Employee ID Number.

The Outlook Web Access application opens in your browser.


The Outlook Web Access Main Page

The Outlook Web Access main page

The large area to the right is the Main Data Pane. This pane displays the data for the current task or folder selected in the Navigation Pane. When you first log into OWA, your Inbox opens by default; as a result, a list of email messages from your Inbox will display in this area.

The bar at the left is the Navigation Pane.

You can move between any of the OWA tools from this area, including the eMail Inbox, the Calendar, Contacts and Tasks. (Check out our other Online Tutorials to learn more about these OWA Tools).

When you first log into OWA, the Navigation pane opens with your Inbox.

At the top of the Main Data Pane is the Toolbar. The toolbar displays task-specific functions that work on the information displayed just underneath. Since we're working with Inbox messages initially at login, the Toolbar defaults to email-related tools, such as creating a new message, moving & copying emails, marking messages as read or unread, and accessing the district address book.


The Inbox

Now let's take a closer look at the overall structure of the Inbox message pane. Each message includes:


A Recieved field that shows when you got the email.

(Note: the downward-pointing blue arrow indicates that the messages are being sorted by the date they were received.)

A set of Icon fields at the left that display additional information about the message.

A Subject field that shows what the message is about.

A From field telling you who sent the email.

In addition, scrolling horizontally to the right will reveal this Size Field.

The size field indicates how big the email message is. This can be useful when deciding on which

emails you should delete, if/when you exceed your 75 Mbyte maximum mailbox size.

Finally, notice above that the first 4 messages in this Inbox have text fields in Bold-Face. This means that you have not yet opened and read these emails.

Icon Fields Let's take a closer look at the icon fields at the left. These icons provide us with more visual cues about the what’s in the email, and what has been done with it.

Icon Description

The Closed Yellow Envelope means that this message is unread.

An Opened, White Envelope indicates that we've already opened and read the message.

An Opened Envelope with a Blue Arrow pointing Away from the Envelope means that we've forwarded this message to someone else...

The Opened Envelope with a Blue Arrow Pointing Toward the Envelope means that we've read the email and replied to the sender about it.

The Paper Clip indicates that the sender included an Attachment (maybe a Word document, or a PowerPoint presentation) with this email.

! A Red Exclamation Mark means that the sender identified this message as Highly Important.

Reading an Email Message To read a message click anywhere on the From, Subject or Received fields.

The selected email message displays in the Main Data Pane, which changes to reflect the email contents:



The Lower Portion of the Pane displays the actual message. Any email message you'll receive typically includes:

• The text of the message itself, and • the sender's Signature (If they've defined one).

You can define a signature for yourself, to be included in any message you send. We'll show you how in a subsequent tutorial.

The Header displays specific information about the email message, such as:• who it's from and who it's to (there may be others besides just us), • anyone the message has been CC'ed (copied) to, • the subject, and date & time the message was received, • alerts about the message’s contents or level or importance, and • any attachments included with the email.

For some messages, alerts will appear at the top. The message shown above includes 2 alerts:

The first indicates that the message was sent with High Importance. The sender believes it’s important for you to read this email message. The second alert warns you about the attachment.

Saving an Attachment Attachments are files included with the email message (such as a Word document, PowerPoint presentation, or Spreadsheet that the sender may want you to have or refer to). The attachment for this email is a PDF (or Portable Document Format) file; these files can be viewed by the Adobe Acrobat Reader (and the Preview application on Apple computers running Mac OS X). The district mail server makes sure to warn you that the attachment may contain viruses that can potentially do a lot of damage; make sure to only open attachments from people you know, and from whom you were expecting information. The above email message focuses on the Job Aid that as included as an attachment. We can open the attachment and save it to our local computer by clicking the Right Mouse button on the attachment. (For Mac Users with a one-button mouse, hold down the Control key - Ctrl - on your keyboard, and while you're holding this key down, click the mouse on the Attachment).

This brings up a menu of options, functions that you can perform on the Attachment. For Firefox, select the Save Link As... option. For Safari users, click the Download Linked File As... selection.


If you’re on a PC, you’ll be prompted for a location on our computer to save this document. Once you've selected the appropriate folder, (and changed the name of the file, if you wish), click the Save button. On a Mac, What happens depends on whether you’re using the Safari browser or the Firefox browser.

• The Safari browser always saves files to a specific location without asking. You can control that location via the Preferences… feature; it defaults to saving email attachments to the Desktop, and you’ll see a pop-up that displays download progress:

• The Firefox browser will always ask you where to save, but it will start with the default location as the Desktop. You’ll see a window like this one pop up:


Once we've finished downloading and saving the attachment, we're back at Debra's Email message.

To get back to the list of emails in our Inbox, click on the Inbox button at the left. Notice what's changed now that we've read this email message...


First, Debra's email message is no longer in bold face; only unread messages show up in bold-face. Once we open it, it is marked as read.

In addition, the envelope icon next to her message has changed; it's now white and opened, not the yellow, closed envelope used for still-unread email, such as Jerry’s message below.

Replying to an Email Message Once again, we'll open the email by clicking on it…

...and we see that Jerry's asking a question that we'll reply to.


Before we reply, take a look at the Toolbar over the Main Information Pane; it has changed, and now contains buttons useful for dealing with specific email messages.

Notice here that there are TWO Ways of Replying to a message...

You can Reply to just the sender of this message.

the large X allows you to Delete this email and return to the Inbox.

...you can Close the message and return to the Inbox.

You can move to the Previous or Following email message using these up- and down-pointing arrows...

You can move or copy the email to another folder.

You can Reply to the sender and everyone this message was sent to.

You can Forward the email to another person.

The Help button provides specifics about the tools in this toolbar.

• Clicking Reply will reply only to the Sender of the email...

• Clicking Reply to all will reply to not only the Sender, but everyone who received the original email

(both CC's and BCC's).

Be very careful when using Reply to all; make sure you really do want to send your reply to everyone who saw the original, lest you incur the wrath of your fellow district employees.

For this demonstration, we'll reply only to Jerry by clicking the Reply button.


When we reply, OWA initially populates the message pane with:

• the original message at the bottom, • and our signature, a few lines of text that we create using the Options function.

In order to type in our message, we click the mouse in the message pane. In the Firefox and Safari version of OWA, we can't get creative with fonts, colors or hyperlinks.


We can add recipients of our reply via the To:, CC: and Bcc: fields above.


When we click the Check Names button...

OWA has a very useful Check Names feature (it's the Guy with the Blue Check Mark, between the Check Spelling and Add Attachment Icons in the Toolbar).

We can type in the Names of district personnel into any of the Addressee fields at the top.

Make sure to separate names with semi-colons ;

We can also type shortened first names (like Rich instead of Richard), or just the last names (such as Sayble, and Dubbs for this demonstration).

...notice that OWA has found a match for Rich Ojeda, and since there is only one person with the last name Sayble in the district, it successfully found Debra as well.

But OWA couldn't resolve the last name dubbs. It alerts us to the problem with this message at the top, and the last name dubbs, still all lower case, is now in Red.

We can click on the last name to try to resolve the problem.

OWA brings up the E-Mail Properties pane. Notice at the bottom, it's found 2 district staff members with the last name Dubbs. We can select the correct person (or we could add an email address, if this recepient wasn't employed by SDUSD).

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...and then click the Apply button.

Since we mean to CC this email to Christopher (for this demonstration, at least), we click the Radio Button next to Chris's name...


Now that we've resolved that problem, all of the Recipient Names are in black, and there are no more alerts. We can now send our reply by clicking Send.

Clicking Send puts us back in the list of messages in our Inbox.


Notice that the message from Jerry we just replied to is no longer in bold-face, indicating that it's been read.

Notice also that the envelope icon for this email has changed to being open, with a blue arrow pointing inward.

As we mentioned before, this indicates that the message has been read, and we've replied to it.

Deleting an Email Message We can delete this message:

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…and then click the Large Red X in the toolbar.

Click the Check Box to the left of the message…

The Inbox Email Message Pane re-displays.

Jerry's message, which had been between the emails from Debra & Elizabeth, is now gone.


Logging Out

Even though OWA will automatically log you off after 15 minutes (if you leave it at the default setting when you Log In), it's still wise to Log Off manually when you're done reading and replying to your email, or anytime you step away from the computer.

This is especially true if you're a teacher with your computer in a classroom, or if the computer you're using is in a public place.

You can do this by clicking the Log Off button in the Navigation Pane at the left.


We’ve stepped through the basics of Reading & Replying to email messages in OWA, including:

• Logging In, • Reading an Email, • Downloading an Attachment, • Replying to an Email message, and • Understanding the basic features of OWA.

There's still a lot more to Outlook Web Access, including:

• Using the Options features to set your signature, indicate when you're away from the office, and find out if you're over the 75 MB email size limit,

• Using the Calendar feature to keep track of your schedule, • Using Contacts to save email addresses and contact information for people you're in touch with regularly,

and • Keeping track of your To-Do list with the Tasks feature.


Documents

Reading & Replying to Email in OWA - San Diego Unified ...old.sandi.net/dwa/email/readandlearn/jobaids/owa/OWA_Reading_Replying.pdf · OWA – Reading & Replying to Email Version