Messages Made Pretty in OE

This will be a particularly long and detailed entry;There are many items I want to talk about for OE mail.Some of us like pretty things and want to make our emails attractive. There are many ways of doing that. Today, I will look at the basic method. Open OE and click on create mail or File/New/Mail Message. Ok, I think I mentioned once that you could change the color of the background by clicking format/background/color and clicking on a color. That's different. Now, have you gone to Format/apply stationery and tried that one?That's fun too. You might want to click on Format/background/picture also. You might be tempted to use one of your pictures as a background; it will seldom work; either they are too dark or you can see the seam. If you have a program on your computer that permits you to fix the edge of a picture so it appears seamless in a background, then you can do that. If you don't have such a program, then you will have to go to Google and ask for backgrounds for OE emails; this will bring up all sorts of links where you can download backgrounds. These are made by people who love making them and sharing them; they are all mostly seamless; if you happen to get some that don't appear seamless, delete them. Now, if you are going to start downloading backgrounds, I would suggest you create a folder called backgrounds and inside that folder, create some more folders to organize your backgrounds. You might like organizing them by theme or color;of course, now, when you want to use one, you will follow the path to your folder by browsing and click ok at the appropriate time and it will apppear as your background. Having done such a wonderful job with the picture background, you will now do the same for music; go to Google; enter "midis"; go to a site, and download a few midis in a folder that you have created called Midis; Now, go to your new message, click format/background/sound; browse to your downloaded midi,click on it; click in front of "play continuously"; click ok.You now will send music with your message. OK, would you like to really choose the color of your Font? Right click on the message area;choose Font;click on "A" underlined in red;click on define custom colors; now, click on a color and use the arrow on the right hand side to get the shade you want;click ok; click ok again and type...voila!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maybe you've seen emails that have little pics in them and you would like to do the same.You are going to have to go to Google again and ask for things: If you want a little picture, for example, a heart or a sun; on Google, click on images and enter the word, for example heart. Many will come up. Choose one and save it in a folder called pics(maybe). If you want a little picture with a word attached to it, like hello or thanks, go to Google and enter Tags. Again, many links; click one,find some that you like and save to a folder called Tags; I know when you have many of them you will want to organize them as I mentioned earlier. If you would like a little picture with your name attached to it; ask Google for name tags; same thing as before; download a few. If you would like little pics that move,ask Google for animated tags;download and use. Ok now let's use them. Open a new message; let's say you have a tag that says Hello; you will want to put this at the beginning of your message; activate your message area by clicking on it; click insert at the top; and click picture; browse to your picture; choose it; now,notice in this window you have different options; under alignment, you can choose different things that will make your text act differently; I personally use "text top" a lot so my text will start at the top of the page and wrap around the tag; experiment and see what look you prefer; then you can put a border around your tag if you wish; just put in a number for the thickness; experiment again. Finally you can choose spacing around your tag; put a number like 3,4 or 5 and the text won't be stuck to the tag. If you didn't want to fool around with all that, you don't have to; just choose your tag and click ok; then once you have it in your message, click at the top of the message on align left, or center or right (remember, hover over the buttons until you find the right one) to put it where you want. Ok remember you can put these tags in your message anytime, anywhere as often as you want. Therefore, it goes without saying that you can add a name tag at the end of your message and position it where you want. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One last thing I would like to attempt today: If you would like a signature for your emails, one you could use over and over again, we can create one. In OE, go to tools, options, signatures.Click on New; under text, write whatever you want; just your name or a favorite saying or whatever you want; click apply and ok. The next time you write a new message,at the end of message,click on insert, signature; it will insert. You can create a whole list of signatures in there. They become sig#1,sig#2 etc...Then, you can use the one you want at any given time. You have to remember which is which to insert the appropriate one. There is a way of having a signature with a picture too, but that is definitely for another day. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I trust you have lots to play with now. Ciao