Write and Send an Email
Council devices use classic Outlook. The new Outlook experience is blocked because of compatbaility issues with Council systems, so if you have seen the new interface elsewhere, what you see at work will look different.
- On the ribbon, select New Email, or press Ctrl + N.
- Add recipients in To, Cc, or Bcc. Separate multiple addresses with a semicolon.
- Type a subject.
- Write your message.
- Select Send.
To pick names from the address book rather than typing them, select the To, Cc, or Bcc button.
To, Cc, or Bcc?
To - the people you need something from, or who need to act.
Cc - people who need to know but do not need to do anything.
Bcc - recipients who cannot see each other's addresses.
Use Bcc when emailing a group of peple who do not know each other such as residents, applicants, submitters, event attendees, or anyone outside the Council. Putting those addresses in To or Cc discloses every person's email address to every other recipient.
That is a privacy breach, it is not undoable once sent, and it is the most common avoidable one at any council. If you are emailing more than a handful of external people who have no reason to know each other, the addresses go in Bcc and your own address goes in To.
Check the recipient before you send
Outlook suggests names as you type, based on who you have emailed before. It is helpful and it is also the commonest cause of email going to the wrong person — two colleagues with similar names, or an external contact whose name resembles an internal one.
Read the To field before you prss Send. Particularly when the message has an attachment or concerns someone's personal information.
Attach a file
On the Insert tab, select Attach File.
For anything large, or anything several people will work on, share a OneDrive or SharePoint link instead — see Share a file using OneDrive. Everyone stays on one version, and you are not emailing copies around.
If you send something by mistake
Undo send gived you a few seconds to pull a message back immediately after sending. Look for the option at the bottom of the screen as the message goes.
Recall may work for a message already sent to a colleague: open it in Sent Items, select File > Message Resend and Recall > Recall This Message.
Recall only works inside the Council, only if the recipient has not opened it, and often does not work at all. Do not rely on it.
If the message went outside the Council, or contained personal information, recall is not the answer. Tell your manager and message us straight away. It may need to be assessed as a data breach, and that assessment has a deadline.