Great Looking E-mail Messages Using Outlook Express™

It's easy to add animations and pictures to your e-mail with Microsoft's Outlook Express. (It comes with Internet Explorer and you can download it for free from Microsoft.)

Animation Factory images work great in e-mail, and we will show you how to do it.

Start Up Outlook Express and here we go!

STEP ONE
Let's start with a new message.

The first and most important step, is to make sure that your message is in the correct format.

Change the format of the message from Plain Text to Rich Text (HTML)

After you change to Rich Text, make sure that "Send Pictures with Message" is checked (this is only visible after you've switched to rich text). Otherwise your recipient will not receive the images or animations that you have selected.

Rich text allows you to include formatting commands that plain text does not allow. Things like background colors, font (type) styles, heading, pictures and animations can all be added when you are in rich text mode.

STEP TWO
Choose a background color or image (optional). In the same tab that you changed to Rich Text, you can also specify a background color or background image. (You can even add a sound if you want to.)

I choose to use a background image from our web collection at MediaBuilder. (To download a background or image, right click your mouse on top of the image and choose "Save Picture As" from the menu. Save the image to your hard drive. Just remember where you saved it, so you can insert it into your e-mail.)

STEP THREE
Add images. You can change the text, font style and insert pictures from the formatting bar.

If you don't see this tool bar, it's probably turned off. Select VIEW/Toolbars/Formatting Bar to make it visible.

The far right button on the formatting Bar is the button used to insert pictures. The rest of the items are used to format your text and paragraphs.

Let's insert a picture in the message.

1. Click the insert image button
2. Click "Browse..." to look on your hard drive,
3. Go to where you have saved an image,
4. Select the image
5. Click "Open".

I choose a cartoon martial arts animation from our collection.

STEP FOUR
Position the image where you want in the message.

You can use the Center, Left and Right Justification tabs in the Formatting Bar to do some positioning of the image. For example if you want the image to appear at the top center of your message, you simply need to click the center justification tab.

To some extent the image can be placed anywhere in your message. To position it more exactly within your message, first right click on top of the image. Choose "properties" from the menu that appears.

This brings up the tools for positioning the image within your message. You can choose different position for the image by selecting different selections from the "Alignment" section of the picture properties. I find that the Left or Right settings are the most helpful. I would suggest that you try several of these setting to see what each does to the position of the image.

Here is what my final message looked like.

I hope this helps you get started making fun and great looking e-mail messages using our animations and graphics here at MediaBuilder and Animation Factory.

Good Luck

Art Holden
Director, Animation Factory