How to add Background Images and Music
to Your Outlook Express e-Mails
This may be the easiest way to add backgrounds and / or music to your Outlook Express e-mail... maybe not the only way, mind you, but it works and it's really very easy.
Note: This works best if you are sending mail to people using Outlook. Other email programs display special encoding, pictures and music a little bit differently.... music files are especially difficult for other email programs like Yahoo, gmail, thunderbird, etc. to handle.
If you want to send a lot of emails with music and images to many different people, who are using different types of email programs, your best bet is to use software or an email list manager that can encode everything into http/mime and deliver it.
With that understood, let's get started adding backgrounds and/or music to your Outlook Express e-mail:
Double-click the Outlook Express icon to open the program, just like normal... (I'm going to assume that you are reasonably familiar with Outlook Express already - if I'm wrong about that, go to Wacky B and go through the New User tutorial.)
Click the "Create Mail" button (Top left corner). That opens the "New Message" window - Should look something like this...
Click on "Format" - then choose "Rich Text (HTML)" from the drop-down menu. Your new message window will change - it should look something like this:
You'll notice that the 'new' toolbar is "greyed out" - just click anywhere in the message area to activate it.
Okay - click on "Format" again and choose "Background", then "Picture" from the drop-down menu. You will get this box:
Just browse to where you have your picture(s) stored, select one, click "OK" and That's All! Your chosen background will be in your email.
See - I told you it was easy!
Add music, a solid-color background or installed stationery to your e-mail the same way, simply choose the item from the "Format" drop-down menu.
Change your font, font size and color with the toolbar just above the message area - but remember one thing - if you get real creative with your font it will not look the same at the other end, unless the person receiving your mail has the same font already installed on his/her computer - AND if that person can receive HTML e-mail.
But it can be really fun - making really unique email...
Credits:
The screen-capture tool I used is a freebie I got Here. It works well, but it does not have a keyboard-activated capture option - you have to use the mouse pointer to capture a screen. (Makes it hard to show you a drop-down menu in action.)
The Dragon Picture in that last pic was taken from the awesome gallery at Andy Simmons - ANS-Graphics
I hope you found this helpful... If you have any questions feel free to Contact Me and I'll try to help.
- Abby Pierce, July '03.
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