Create and send a voting poll in an email message

It is easy to create a poll in Microsoft Outlook by including voting buttons in an email message that you are sending. Recipients' votes are delivered to your Inbox.

 Note    A Microsoft Exchange Server account is required.

1. Create a new email message, or open a message that you want to reply to or forward.
2. On the Options tab, in the Tracking group, click Use Voting Buttons.

3. Click one of the following:
• Yes;No     When you want only a definite yes or a no, this is the best choice.
• Yes;No;Maybe     This voting option offers recipients a third option.
• Custom     Click this command to create your own custom voting button names. For example, you can ask your colleagues to choose among restaurants for a lunch meeting.
1. When the Properties dialog box appears, under Voting and Tracking options, select the Use voting buttons check box.
2. 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.

 Notes 

• If you apply Information Rights Management (IRM) permissions (Options tab, Permission command) to a message, the recipient will not see the voting options.
• Recipients can vote in the Reading Pane (Reading Pane: A window in Outlook where you can preview an item without opening it. To display the item in the Reading Pane, click the item.) 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 that you want. In an open message, on the Message tab, in the Respond group, click Vote and then click the option that you want.
• The sender can see all responses in a table. On one of the response messages click the The sender responded line in the message header, then click View voting responses.

Review the voting responses

1. Open the message that you sent which included voting buttons. By default, sent messages are saved in the Sent Items folder.
2. On the Message tab, in the Show group, click Tracking.

 Note    Tracking does not appear until at least one recipient of the email message has replied with his or her vote.