Set up email

6 minute read

What you will learn

This article will introduce you to the basic functionality of your email account:

  1. Accessing your email account
  2. Pro tips for sending and receiving email
  3. Tips for scheduling meetings
  4. Intro to shared mailboxes

Prerequisites

  1. You will need your username and password to set up your email. If you have not received your username and password, email techsupport@ermapta.org.
  2. You should have logged in at least once to https://www.office.com; doing this ensures that any required password reset is addressed before attempting to log into an email client.

About your email address

Most staff members and volunteers have been configured with a user account and email address. You can receive or send email from a Web browser or an email client like Outlook or Gmail.

Your email address is intended primarily for official communication. It is completely reasonable to use the email address occasionally for personal purposes, but please do not make a habit of this. (See usage guidelines.)

Accessing email

From a browser

You can use any device with a Web browser to access your email account. Simply go to https://www.office.com and click on Outlook, or navigate directly to https://outlook.office.com.

Microsoft Outlook is the recommended email client for two reasons:

  1. Outlook is consistently one of the top two email apps in app stores and “best email app” metareviews (such as this one by the Verge).
  2. Microsoft develops the email service. When Microsoft also develops the email client, it is reasonable to expect the service and client to work well together.

Outlook
  1. Install Outlook from your device’s app store.
  2. Tap Add Account and enter your email address. a. If this is the first account you’re adding, simply type the email address in the provided field. b. Otherwise, tap Settings > Add Account > Add Email Account and type your email address there.
  3. Enter your password and tap Sign in.
  4. If multi-factor authentication is enabled on your account, verify your identity by following the prompts.
  5. Grant consent in subsequent dialogs.

Mail and Calendar (Outlook alternative for Windows)

Mail and Calendar are Windows apps that provide a similar experience to Outlook.

  1. Install Mail and Calendar from the Microsoft app store.
  2. Tap Add Account, then Exchange (our accounts are Office 365) and enter your email address. a. If this is the first account you’re adding, simply type the email address in the provided field. b. Otherwise, tap Settings > Manage Accounts > Add account and type your email address there.
  3. Enter your password and tap Sign in.
  4. If multi-factor authentication is enabled on your account, verify your identity by following the prompts.

Pro tips for sending and receiving email

We’re going to assume you know the basics of sending and receiving email, but just in case you don’t, Microsoft has you covered with lots of email support articles.

Instead, let’s cover the top 5 most useful pro tips for working with email.

Tip Summary
1. Use @-mentions If you’d like to get someone’s attention in an email message or a meeting invite, you can type the @ symbol, followed by their name, in the body of the email message or a meeting invite. If you do this, not only will their name be highlighted in the message body or invite details, but Outlook will automatically add them to the To line of the email or meeting invite, and they’ll see the @ symbol next to the message in their Inbox.
2. Add pictures, tables, or other things to email If line after line of plain text is boring your recipients, turn your message into a visual masterpiece with pictures, tables, and other attachments.
3. Flag messages for follow up By flagging email messages, you can track responses to messages that you send. You can also make sure that you follow up on messages that you receive. In either case, you can include a reminder alert.
4. Create email polls It’s easy to create a poll in Microsoft Outlook by including voting buttons in an email message. When recipients respond to the poll, you can either automatically tabulate the results of the vote in Outlook or export the responses to an Excel worksheet.
5. Schedule emails You can delay the delivery of an individual message or you can use rules to delay the delivery of all messages by having them held in the Outbox for a specified time after you click Send.
Bonus Create and use templates in your emails Use email templates to send messages that include information that infrequently changes from message to message. Compose and save a message as a template, and then reuse it when you want it. New information can be added before the template is sent as an email message.

Tips for scheduling meetings

You can create appointments (time for yourself) or meetings (time with others) using the calendaring features of your email account. Here are our top 5 tips for managing your calendar:

Tip Summary
1. Schedule a meeting with others You can send a meeting request to one or more people. Outlook tracks who accepts the request and reserves time on your calendar for the meeting. When you create a meeting request, you can add attachments, set a location, and use the Scheduling Assistant to choose the best time for your meeting.
2. Change a meeting or event You can change an appointment, meeting, or event that you created to update your Outlook calendar and to let other people know about schedule changes.
3. Cancel or forward a meeting If a meeting isn’t necessary or you accidentally forgot to include someone, you can easily handle these changes.
4. Share an Outlook calendar with others If you have an Exchange, Microsoft 365, or Outlook.com account, you can send a sharing invitation to other users so they can view your calendar in their own Calendar list.
5. View multiple calendars You can see multiple calendars at the same time side-by-side or combined into a stacked overlay view to help you see availability across calendars.

Intro to shared mailboxes

Shared mailboxes are a bit different than the mailbox attached to a user account. Shared mailboxes are accessible by multiple users. For instance, an email like volunteer@ermapta.org may require multiple users to manage the email volume.

Users who have access to a shared mailbox can read the email sent to the mailbox and send email on behalf of the mailbox. For example, a user who has access to the volunteer@ermapta.org mailbox can send emails from that address.

For more information, see Shared mailboxes.


Last modified August 13, 2020: Move usage guidelines in left nav (5757ab5)