Volume 30 Issue 3

Issue Date: January 23, 2025 « Previous Issue | Next Issue »

The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on January 23, 2025.

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Today's Highlights »

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Personal and Family
Reply All to Forwarded Message?
Insert Word Document into Email using VBA
New Outlook Quick Tip: Focused and Other

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Personal and Family

As of January 16, 2025, Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans will include Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Designer. This comes with an increased price ($130US for Family, $100US / Personal) at your next renewal. (If you renewed right before the price increase, lucky you!).

Existing Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers will automatically have access to Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote when the latest update is installed.

If you don't want to use copilot, you can disable it in File > Options > Copilot. Remove the Copilot button from the ribbon in File > Options > Customize ribbon. Note: there was a bug where the option to disable copilot did not work. It will be fixed soon.

Subscribers with recurring billing enabled can switch to other plans without Copilot or Microsoft 365 Basic (does not include Office software). Microsoft has “classic”, copilot-less plans available for a limited time. Microsoft 365 Personal Classic and Microsoft 365 Family Classic are the old Personal and Family plans.

Reply All to Forwarded Message?

A user had a question: “When a message is forwarded to me, the original message may have a lot of addresses in the CC. I would like to be able to reply to all, without copying each email address individually from the email trail to the address bar. Is there a way to "reply all” to all of the addresses in the message? "

No, that is not possible. There isn’t an add-in that can do it. I’m not aware of an existing macro (or PowerShell) that does this, although it would be possible to use regex to scan the email for addresses, so its not impossible.

Possible non-programmatic solutions: If the person forwards it to you as an attachment, you could open the attached email and reply all to everyone the last message was sent to.

But if they won’t do that (or forget to), you don’t need to copy addresses individually. Select the entire To: and CC: line in the reply header and paste it into the address field. If you copied To: and CC: along with the addresses, you’ll need to remove them from the address field.

Copying the To and CC lines works in both classic and new Outlook. In new Outlook, the addresses resolve automatically within seconds; in classic Outlook, while the cursor is in the address field press Alt+K to resolve the addresses quickly.

If the message was forwarded to the previous recipients, one at a time, you’ll need to copy the addresses one To-or-CC line at a time. If you use Windows 11, you can save some scrolling time by enabling the multi-clipboard feature. Copy all addresses as you scroll down the message, then scroll up and press Windows key + V to view the clipboard and paste the addresses.

Insert Word Document into Email using VBA

A user wanted to reply to senders by inserting a Word document into the response as the message text. While you can do this using copy and paste, or using Insert > Insert As Text, you can automate it using VBA. (I’ll add a PowerShell version as soon as I have time.)

The macro uses the Word Object Model to open and copy the document then uses the WordEditor object in Outlook to paste the copied content. For this to work, you need to set a reference to the Word Object Library, in the VB Editor Tools > References menu.

As written, the reply macros work on the message selected in the message list. The two reply macros can be tweaked to work on multiple selected messages. At the end is a macro to send a new message.

There are three variations to the macros: one to reply to a message and include the original message (and your signature, if you use one), one to reply with just the document text, and one that sends a new message containing the document text (and your signature, if using).

Get the code samples at Insert Word Document into Email using VBA

New Outlook Quick Tip: Focused and Other

If you want to move a message from Other to Focused tab (or Focused to Other) in new Outlook or Outlook on the web, there are several ways to do it:

1. Drag the message to the tab. When you see the dotted line around the tab, drop the message. If you use the reading pane, you can select multiple messages and drag them to the other tab. If the reading pane is turned off, you can only drag one message at a time.

2. Select the message(s) and expand the Move button on the Home ribbon. Click on Move to [focused/other] inbox.

3. Right click on the message, choose Move from the menu then select Move to [focused/other] inbox.

Using the Move > Move to [focused/other] inbox command (items 2 and 3) works in classic Outlook. Dragging to the tabs does not work in classic Outlook and is unlikely to be added to it.

Another tip on Focused Inbox: if you do not have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you’ll have little ads at the top of your Inbox. If you use Focused Inbox, you’ll only have the ads on the Other tab.