need to connect my form control>Text area with form control>submit button to have it send an email back to me

I think what you are asking for is a contact form for your web site.  What server are you using?  Apache or IIS ?

here is an example from w3schools which might be what you are looking for.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_form_mail

This example uses MAILTO to have users use their own email server.  If you are looking for server side email, then it depends on what server you are using.

Hi jeffreyhauser,

The problem is that Publisher is not really a web development package.

When you place the text area and submit button, what you are actually creating is something like this:

<form>
<textarea></textarea>
<input type="Submit">
</form>

What you need to be able to do is specify where the form submits to:

<form method="post" action="somescript">

and in Publisher, my best guess is that you need to right click the text area or submit button and go to its properties and you might be able to specify the stuff there.  However, you might be better off opening the page in a text editor and editing the code directly.

>> I mean it should be as easy as "as soon as the text field is filled out the submit button is hit and an email is sent.  

Yes, but YOU need to know how that happens.  Form data is typically sent to a script created in Perl, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, or an ASP.NET control where the data is processed, converted to safe text, and then emailed to you.  GoDaddy has a number of "canned" scripts available for your use...look through the documentation or contact their support.  

This is the step that usually separates the men from the boys (or women from the girls) when it comes to web design.  There are a LOT of designers out there who do not handle the scripting part of pages and that really limits what they can do.