Email Tips
"The single biggest problem in communication
is the illusion that it has taken place."
George Bernard Shaw
Deal with email as soon as possible
Many
of us receive a lot of email: quite apart from the work deluge, there's
Internet Groups, friends and relations, newsletters, and on it goes. Deal
with it right away or it will become a millstone.
If it requires action on your part, do it now. If you can't do it now, flag it for attention later.
If you can answer it in one of two lines, so much the better.
If you don't absolutely need to keep the message...
...delete it! Don't keep any email (or other document for that matter) that you don't need. Even if you need the information it contains, if it's easily retrievable from another source - dump the email. Otherwise your email mountain becomes unmanageable.
Don't forget you can copy and paste important bits into a word processor
document or other type of text file to save in My Documents.
Put your email in folders...
...and sub folders. Create a logical tree system, just like your My Documents has (it has, hasn't it?) In most email programs the distribution can be automated on arrival by creating Rules.
This is really easy to do in Outlook; a little more involved in Outlook Express, but worth the effort.
If you do have a lot of email to keep, this can make your life a lot easier.
That's a partially expanded Outlook Inbox tree on the right: most of my mail drops straight into one of those folders.
You don't need to go to the individual folder to read it, you can see it all in the Unread Mail folder.
"President Bush said for security reasons, he's sworn off all email
communication.
He will not be using email at the White House at all. Is that a good
idea? I mean, it's not like that speaking thing was working out so good.”
Jay Leno
Keep your email address to yourself
and your trusted friends, relatives and associates. Whenever you download something, or sign up for something on the Net, you'll be asked for an email address. Give them the throwaway address you get from Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail. More about the whys and wherefores of this on the junkmail page.
Forward this to everyone you know...
.....don't!
If you receive an email which contains a message similar to that heading, ignore it.
If it's a virus warning or a tip about stopping spam, it's probably a hoax. Check here: http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ before you send anything on. If in doubt, delete it.
If you receive mail from anyone you don't know or weren't expecting mail from, especially if it contains an attachment, it's wise to delete it without opening it.
Snipping
When you reply to an email by clicking any of the Reply or Forward buttons on the toolbar of either the program or a message you've received, you should do some trimming. Most people are blissfully unaware of this etiquette.
At the bottom of many of the messages you receive you'll often find a trail of other peoples messages and personal data back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Once you've clicked Reply or Forward the message now appears in an editing window. You can add your text, but you can also edit the existing stuff.
Only leave what's necessary for the recipient to understand your message and to what it refers . Delete everything else. In particular you should remove any reference to other people's email addresses. More about this on the junkmail page too.
If a person feels he can't communicate,
the least he can do is shut up about it.
Tom
Lehrer
Netiquette
- Remember that there's a real live person at the end of your message. You're not talking to a screen. Would you say it to the person's face?
- Don't SHOUT. Upper case in email-speak is shouting. It's considered rude and offensive under most circumstances.
- Always enter something relevant to your message in the subject
box. Otherwise it's impossible for the recipient to identify the message
later and he or she may choose to ignore it.
- You don't have to spend long in many discussion groups to realise that spelling and grammar still count.
- Use a basic smiley :o) to take the sting out of something which may be misinterpreted or just to show that you're kidding, but don't go overboard with them. Fancy animated "emoticons" are distracting and unnecessary timewasters. ]:o(
- Keep it as short and to the point as you can under the circumstances. Your recipient may well deal with hundreds of messages a day.
Attachments
In Outlook and Outlook Express and other email programs you can add attachments easily via the toolbar or the menu.
There's an easier and quicker way to add attachments: drag-and-drop.
- Open Windows Explorer (Windows Key + E) and navigate to the folder containing the file you want to send.
- Click on the file with the left mouse button.
- Keep the mouse button pressed down and drag the file over to the message window.
- Drop the file anywhere over the message window by releasing the mouse button.
The file will automatically be added as an attachment.
Repeat for other files if necessary.
Send email to undisclosed recipients
Create a new message in your email program.
- Insert "Undisclosed Recipients" in the To: field, followed by your email address in < > braces.
- The To: field will look like this: Undisclosed Recipients <me@my-isp.com>".
- Add the recipients' email addresses in the Bcc: field.
- The Bcc: field will look like this: "him@his-isp.org, her@herplace.net, them@somewhere_else.com".
For more on the subject of Bcc, see Blind copies a must on the Junkmail page. This has very important security implications.
