You can embed items in your email when using Outlook, which are different than adding a file as an attachment. Attaching a file just means sending the file along with the email. But you can also add items in your main email body that will show up at recipients computer with downloading the file.
In this article, we will discuss how to add tables and images in Outlook.
How to add Tables
Tables are pretty common type of items to be sent via email. Imagine a scenario where you have to add a table that lists the name of the products, its manufacturing cost, sales price, discounts, and other things. You can do that with Outlook pretty easily.
You can also copy the table from an excel sheet, without having to attach the excel file in itself. When you copy and paste the rows and columns from Excel into the new email window in Outlook, Outlook Mail automatically picks up the formatting, like font size, types, colors, and so on. It also picks up the border for the cells in a table. Therefore, if you are copying from an excel sheet and the cells in its has no border, it might look awkward in Outlook. Please note that it won’t automatically pick up the width or rows or columns as well. Take a look at the screenshot below for an example.
This is a table copied from an excel sheet.
If you think this is not too clearly formatted, it’s because it looked alright in an excel due to the default grid lines/borders excel has. But you can solve this issue by clicking on this table in Outlook and then going to “Design” and “format” tab at the top ribbon and using any of the available options to make the table look cleaner and more organized. Take a look at the screenshot below:
Now, it looks much better.
You can also create a table from scratch within Outlook itself, if you don’t want to copy it from an excel sheet. Go to ‘Insert’ tab at the top ribbon, then click on table and choose the number of rows and columns by dragging the mouse alongside. It will also show you the table being generated below.
If the icon for ‘table’ is greyed out, it means that the focus is not inside the mail body but inside the headers of an email (like ‘Subject’, to, from, etc.). Click anywhere inside the mail where the actual content is and the option for table will be enabled.
Again, you can format this table as you see fit by clicking on the table first and then going to ‘Design’ tab at the top ribbon and also at the “Layout” tab to modify the layout of it.
About Layout
From the layout tab, you can click on the “Properties” option and then modify the properties of the table from the new properties box.
You have a lot of options inside the Table Properties dialog box, from adjusting the width, alignment of text inside a cell, text wrapping, and even borders and shading.
An important functionality here is that of “Alt Text.” It lets you add text based description of the table, especially useful for users with vision impairments who might find hard to read a table.
At the end of the “Layout” tab, there’s an option for “formula,” which means exactly what it means in Excel. If you are familiar with using formulas in excel, you can apply the same method in tables in Outlook email.
About Design
When you click on a table, two types of tools will show up – layout and design.
In ‘Design’ category of tools, you have the options to color the table as you want. You can also apply an overall style to the table, that does things like automatically color the alternative rows or alternative columns or only top rows, and so on. You have the full control on how you want the table to look.
To manually “shade” or fill a cell with a specific color you want, you have to first select the cell you want the color for, then go to “Shading” and then simply choose the color of your choice.
The last section in ‘Design’ tab is that of borders.
- Select the type of straight lines you want as the border for the table.
- At the end, click on Border painter to paint a single border of a single cell manually after picking the color and line style for it.
- You can also select the entire table and then choose from the line style, color, and where you want the borders to be
How to attach an image in an email using Outlook?
Adding an image with your email contents is also very simple. Go to the “Insert” tab at the top ribbon and then go to “Pictures” > This Device or ‘Online Pictures.’
You can find relevant images by going to ‘Online Pictures’ and then searching the kind of images you want. Outlook searches for images using Bing search engine and also via your own OneDrive database. If you are going to use an online picture, be sure that are not using a copyrighted picture without permission for commercial purposes. It’s always a good idea to ask for permission from the author of the picture.
If you click on “This Device,” then browse through the local database stored in your computer for picture.
When you find the one you want to add, click “insert.” Outlook will automatically insert it in your email with its original size and dimensions.
By clicking on the image, look for the small circles at the corners of the picture, using which, you can resize it if you want to fit it better in your email (as shown by the red arrows in the screenshot below):
There’s also a rotate icon at the top center of the image. Click on it and drag it to rotate the image.
We hope the post above has helped in you adding tables and images and format them according to the general style of the email you want to send. Note that adding images, especially of high resolution can also increase the size of the email you are sending, as is with any other item you add to the email.