OL98: (CW) Outlook Voting and Vote Processing (180082)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Outlook 98
This article was previously published under Q180082
NOTE: These procedures only apply if you have installed Outlook with the Corporate Workgroup/Other option. This option allows you to use Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) services. To determine your installation type, on the Help Menu click About Microsoft Outlook. In About Microsoft Outlook you should see "Corporate" if you have the Corporate Workgroup installation.

SUMMARY

With Microsoft Outlook 98, you can send survey-type messages with voting buttons to a group of recipients. By clicking a button each respondent can express their preference and generate a response message to vote. Outlook logs Vote messages to the original message's tracking page.

For the Voting feature to work, both the message sender and the message recipient must be using Outlook. It also depends upon the setting of certain options in Outlook, and the proper handling of the incoming Vote messages. This article describes the conditions and requirements for proper operation of the Voting feature.

NOTE: The voting feature is not available with the Internet Mail Only (IMO) version of Outlook 98.

MORE INFORMATION

How to Generate Voting Messages

  1. From the Inbox folder, on the Actions menu, click New Mail Message.

    Note: You should always use Outlook Rich Text Format for messages containing voting buttons. Failure to do so may result in missing buttons or replies that do not work.
  2. Click the Options button on the toolbar and under Voting and Tracking options click, Use Voting Buttons.
  3. Click to select one of the predefined option sets or type your own set of options, separating each by a semi-colon (;). Each of these options items will be the title of a voting button on the message received.
  4. Click Close.
  5. Click in the message area, complete the survey message and click Send.

Processing Vote Response Messages

Outlook either manually or automatically logs the incoming Vote messages to the original message in the Sent Items folder on its tracking page.

Manual Logging of Vote Messages

Opening or deleting a Vote message logs it to the tracking page. However, deletion of the Vote message by an Inbox rule will not log the message.

Automatic Logging of Vote Messages

The following conditions are required for automatic processing of Vote messages:

  • The sent message must remain in the default Sent Items folder.
  • The Vote message must remain in the default Inbox.
  • There must be 30 to 60 seconds of idle time on your computer before the automatic processing will activate. Any keyboard or mouse movement will interrupt this idle time.

You Must Select Automatic Processing Options

  1. On the Tools menu, click Options, click E-mail Options and then click Advanced E-mail Options.
  2. Click to select, "Process requests and responses on arrival" and Click OK.
  3. Click Tracking Options, and then click to select "Delete receipts and blank responses after processing." Click OK, OK, and OK.
These options automatically log votes to the sent message's Tracking page, then delete them if they have no text entered by the respondent.

REFERENCES

For more information on message tracking, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

179387 OL98: How to Sort and Print Tracking Information

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:9/23/1999
Keywords:kbinfo KB180082
©2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.