Outlook Inbox Sending an Email from an Open Word, Excel or PowerPoint File

The following is written with Office 2013 in mind. If you have an older version of Office you will need to experiment in the "File" menu of Word, Excel and PowerPoint to determine how to send the open saved file as an email attachment. You may have written a document that you want to send to a friend, teacher, boss, or family member. You decide that you do not want to go through all of the steps for attaching a file in the Outlook new email form. All you need to do is be sure that Outlook is open, and your Word, Excel or PowerPoint document is saved and open also. You have two programs open, with one of them being Outlook. In your open document, spreadsheet or presentation, press and hold down the Alt key and hit the letter f to go to "File" menu. Down arrow to the "Share" item. Hit the Tab key one time. Down arrow one time to "Email." Hit the Tab key one time and you will land on an item titled "Send as Attachment." An Outlook new email form will pop up. Type the email address or addresses you want to send the attachment to--remember to put a semi-colon followed by a space between each email address. Tab two times and you will hear the name of your item in the "Subject" box. You can press Control Shift right arrow to highlight the "Subject" content and write a different subject if you wish. Tab one more time and you will hear the name of your attached item. Tab one more time and you will be in the body of the email. Type a standard email note, starting with "Dear ____." Hit the F7 key to spell check the email. When you are finished press Alt s to send the email. Do the following activity to develop this skill. When you are finished move to the link at the bottom of this page titled "BACK" to go to the "Outlook Lessons" web page.

1. Open Outlook.

2. Open Word.

3. Hit the Escape key one time to be sure you are in a blank document.

4. Type "This is a test attachment from Word" (without the quotes).

5. Hit F7 to spell check your document.

6. Press Control s to save the document.

7. Press Alt f to bring up the "File" menu.

8. Down arrow to the "Share" item.

9. Hit the Tab key one time.

10. Down arrow one time to the "Email" item.

11. Hit the Tab key one time and you will be on the "Send as Attachment" item.

12. Hit the Enter key one time and the email form will come up, and you will be in the "To" edit box where you can type email addresses.

13. Type the email address of the person you are sending the attachment to, or type the first email address followed immediately by the semi-colon, a space, the second email address, and so on.

14. Tab two times to get to the "Subject" edit box. If you want to change the text in the Subject edit box, press Control Shift right arrow to highlight, and then type in the new text.

15. Tab one time and you will hear the name of the item you have attached to the email.

16. Tab one time and you will be in the body of the email. Type a standard email starting with "Dear ____:" hit Enter two times and type your paragraph. Hit Enter two times and type something like "Kind Regards, or Sincerely, or Cordially" followed by a comma. Hit Enter two times and type your name.

17. Press Alt s to send the email. You should now be returned to your document, spreadsheet, or presentation.

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