How to Use Voting Buttons in Microsoft Outlook to Conduct Quick Email Polls

Reaching a decision with a team or client group via traditional email often turns into an overwhelming mess of fragmented replies, divergent opinions, and missed responses. When you ask a simple question—such as choosing a project deadline, approving a design draft, or selecting a meeting venue—reading through dozens of separate replies and manually calculating totals wastes valuable time and increases the risk of human error.

For organisations running Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft 365, Microsoft Outlook provides a powerful, built-in solution: Voting Buttons. By embedding voting buttons into an outbound message, you provide recipients with simple one-click response choices right at the top of their email window. Even better, Outlook automatically tallies incoming votes into an organised tracking table, eliminating manual counting entirely.

How Voting Buttons Function in Outlook

When an email containing voting buttons arrives in a recipient’s inbox, Outlook displays a prominent notification bar in the reading pane or message ribbon stating: “The sender has included voting buttons. Vote by clicking here.”

When the recipient clicks their choice, Outlook prompts them to send the response immediately. When that vote reaches your inbox, Outlook’s tracking engine intercepts the message, records the recipient’s name and decision, and updates a centralised tracking sheet attached to your original sent email.

Adding Default Voting Buttons to an Email

Microsoft Outlook includes three standard, pre-configured voting options: Approve; Reject, Yes; No, and Yes; No; Maybe.

1. Open Microsoft Outlook on your Windows PC and click New Email to start composing a message.
2. Address the email to your intended recipients, enter a descriptive subject line, and write your contextual question in the message body.
3. Click the Options tab on the top ribbon.
4. In the Tracking section of the ribbon, click the Use Voting Buttons button.
5. Choose one of the standard presets from the dropdown menu:
   • Approve; Reject
   • Yes; No
   • Yes; No; Maybe
6. A banner will appear above your draft saying: “You added voting buttons to this message.”
7. Click Send to dispatch the poll to your team.

Creating Custom Voting Choices

If standard approval or yes/no responses do not match your project requirements—such as polling for preferred meeting days (Monday; Wednesday; Friday) or project choices (Option A; Option B; Option C)—you can define completely bespoke voting buttons.

1. In your new email composition window, click the Options tab.
2. Click Use Voting Buttons and select Custom… from the bottom of the dropdown menu.
3. The Properties dialogue window opens. Under the Voting and Tracking options section, ensure the box next to Use voting buttons is checked.
4. In the text field immediately next to the checkbox, delete any existing default text.
5. Type your desired options, separating each choice with a semicolon (;). For example:

   Monday; Wednesday; Friday

   or

   Budget A (Standard); Budget B (Expanded); Budget C (Phased)

6. Click Close to return to your email draft.
7. Complete your message and click Send.

How Recipients Cast Their Vote

When recipients receive your email in Outlook, casting a vote is straightforward depending on how they view the message:

• In the Outlook Reading Pane: Click the information bar at the top of the message that reads “Click here to vote”, select the chosen option from the dropdown, and confirm Send the response now.
• In an Opened Message Window: In the Respond group on the Message ribbon, click Vote, select your preferred button from the list, and confirm your choice.

Recipients can also add a brief explanatory note before sending their vote if the context demands nuance.

Tracking and Tallying the Results

As team members vote, you will receive individual notification emails detailing each user’s choice. However, you do not need to record these individually. Outlook aggregates every response into a comprehensive tracking overview:

1. Open your Sent Items folder in Outlook.
2. Locate and double-click the original email you sent with the voting buttons to open it in its own window.
3. On the Message ribbon, look in the Show group and click the Tracking button. (Note: The Tracking button only appears after at least one recipient has submitted a vote).
4. Outlook displays a comprehensive summary table showing:
   • The total vote count for each available option.
   • A complete alphabetical roster of recipients, their individual vote selection, and the date and time they responded.

Exporting and Copying Poll Results

If you need to share the results with project stakeholders or paste the data into a spreadsheet report, you can easily export the data from the Tracking sheet:

1. In the Tracking view of your sent message, select the table rows by clicking and dragging your cursor, or press Ctrl + A.
2. Press Ctrl + C to copy the tracking data to your clipboard.
3. Open Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, or a Word document and press Ctrl + V.

The copied information preserves clean tabular formatting, including recipient email addresses, timestamps, and respective voting choices, providing an auditable decision trail for your team.