It's easy to create a message in Microsoft Outlook that uses voting buttons to ask your recipients questions with a specific and limited set of answers. When recipients respond using the voting buttons, you can either automatically tabulate the results of the vote in Outlook or export the responses to an Excel worksheet.
Add voting buttons
Notes:
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A Microsoft Exchange Server account is required.
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If you encrypt an Outlook message that contains voting buttons, message recipients won't be able to see them. That feature isn't supported at this time.
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Create an email message or reply to or forward a message that you received.
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On the Options tab, in the Tracking group, select Use Voting Buttons.
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Choose one of the following:
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Approve;Reject Use when you need an authorization for an action. For example, you can send an email request to several recipients seeking their approval of a project proposal.
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Yes;No Use when you need either a yes or a no. This is a good way to take a quick poll.
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Yes;No;Maybe Use when you don't want to limit the choices to yes and no. This voting option offers an alternative response.
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Custom Use to create your own custom voting button names. For example, you can ask your colleagues to choose among three days of the week for a recurring weekly staff meeting.
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Custom voting button
If you chose a Custom voting button, do the following:
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In the Properties dialog box, under Voting and Tracking options, select the Use voting buttons check box.
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Use the default button options or delete the default options and then type the text that you want, and use semicolons to separate the button names.
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Select Close.
Important: If you apply Information Rights Management (IRM) permissions (Options tab > Permission command) to a message, the recipient won’t see the voting options.
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Recipients can vote in the Reading Pane or in an open message. In the Reading Pane, select the Click here to vote line in the message header and then select the option that you want. In an open message, on the Message tab, in the Respond group, select Vote, and then select the option that you want.
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The sender can see all responses in a table. On one of the response messages, select the The sender responded line in the message header, then select View voting responses.
Review the voting responses
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Open the original message with voting buttons that you sent. This message is usually located in the Sent Items folder.
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On the Message tab, in the Show group, select Tracking.
Note: Tracking doesn't appear until at least one recipient of the email message has replied with his or her vote.
Track and print results
When you create and send an email with voting buttons to others, you may want to track and print the results. You can either quickly copy the voting results into a blank Word document or a new email, or copy them into Excel so you can work with the data later.
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In Outlook, in the Sent Items folder, open the email message you sent that contains the voting poll.
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Select Message > Tracking.
Tip: The Tracking button doesn’t appear until at least one vote has been cast.
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To print the results, do one of the following:
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For a quick print, press Alt + Print Screen (PrtScrn) on the keyboard, and then do one of the following:
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In Word, select Blank document, and then select Paste.
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In Outlook, select Home >New Email, and then select Paste.
Select File > Print, specify a printer, and then select Print.
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To sort and work with the data results in Excel, first do this:
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Select Message > Tracking.
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On the keyboard, press and hold Ctrl, and then select and drag the mouse to select all names and responses in the list.
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On the keyboard, press Ctrl + C.
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Open Excel and choose Blank workbook.
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Right-click the top-left cell, and then select Paste.
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To adjust the columns to fit the text, place the cursor between the column headers and double-click.
Select File > Print, specify a printer, and then select Print.
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