By: Dawn Monroe, MOSM, MCE, MCCT, CVE, CVP

Integrating Microsoft Forms into Your Outlook Email

Polling Power

Do you ever have the need to email a quick survey to several people?  In the past, you may have used the Voting Buttons feature in Microsoft Outlook.  You can now add a Poll integrating Microsoft Forms which is an even better choice!

Voting buttons have been around for quite a while, but they have some limitations.  For instance, as people “voted” a separate email was sent to you from each person.  That could fill up your inbox quickly! And oftentimes it was difficult for the receiver to see where to record the vote. It was even tricky to find where to add voting buttons to your email message!

Polling is more powerful and simpler, both for the sender and receiver.  You can:

• create custom choices utilizing familiar Microsoft Forms interface
• vote easily from the body of the email
• improve clarity for the receiver to respond
• eliminate inbox overload from voting responses
• customize to select more than one option
• view results with the click of a button

Since the interface is like what you would see when creating polls in Teams meetings and other Microsoft 365 apps, users will adapt to this one quickly.  The voting buttons have always been a bit clunky.  Try a poll and see what you think!

Find the Poll button on the Insert tab of the email message.  You can locate Polls in all the latest versions of Microsoft Outlook.  Read more about Create a Poll in Outlook.

A productivity tip from Dawn Monroe Training, July 2022.