Save Time With Outlook Voting Emails

How many emails do you send out that asks the recipients to cast their “vote” among multiple options? Asking a simple question such as “Do you want to go to lunch today?” requires multiple reply emails. And then you need to keep track of who said they were coming.

This entire process is a huge waste of time.

Outlook provides a tool that allows you to send a “Voting Email” and automatically counts the results in a simple to read table.

Here are the simple steps to create a voting email in Outlook 2010 and 2013:

1. Create a new message.
2. Click the Options tab and then click Use Voting Buttons.
3. Select the voting options from the list, e.g. ‘Yes;No’ or ‘Yes;No;Maybe.’
4. Add email addresses for the people you want to vote.
5. Type the message and then click Send. Once people vote, their responses will arrive in your Inbox.

Recipients can vote in the Reading Pane or in an open message. In the Reading Pane, click the Click Here to Vote line in the message header and then click the option you want. In an open message, on the Message tab in the Respond group, click Vote and then click the option that you want.

To view the voting results, simply open the message you sent that included the voting buttons. As we said, by default, sent messages are saved in the Sent Items folder. On the Message tab, in the Show group, click Tracking.

There are multiple ways you can use the Outlook voting capability: If you are organizing an agency function and you would like to know who will be attending, or, if you are trying to schedule a meeting and want to know which meeting time is best for everyone.

A few things to keep in mind:

1. A Microsoft Exchange Service platform is required. This does not work in stand-alone Outlook.
2. You can customize the voting buttons. To do this, follow steps 1 and 2 above. In step 3 select Custom. In the Use Voting Buttons box, type the voting options you require separated by a semicolon, e.g. Pink;Purple;Blue;Red.
3. Do not delete the voting email from your Sent Items folder as it will disable the tracking. Leave it in the folder until tracking is no longer required.
4. Tracking does not appear until at least one recipient of the email message has replied with their vote.

Experiment using the Outlook Voting option with a small group of people to learn how it works. Using this function consistently will save a large amount of time for you and office staff.

How would you use the voting buttons in Outlook? Let me know in the comments section below.