I recently came across an article regarding some commonly made e-mail mistakes. As we all need to be reminded of them from time to time, I thought it might be helpful to share the articles highlights.

Often, when you forward e-mail messages to others, there is left over information from the previous recipients of that message. Each time that e-mail gets forwarded, the list of addresses builds and grows and should one person get a virus, they can then forward that virus to every other address their computer has come into contact with.

DO:
- delete ALL of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message. You must ‘Forward’ the message first in order to be able to access the body and headers of the message. After hitting ‘forward’, edit the message by deleting all the other addresses that appear in the body of the e-mail.

DO:
-make use of the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) instead of the To: or Cc: fields when you forward the e-mail to more than one person. By doing so, the recipient will only see their own e-mail address.

DO:
-remove the “FW:” in the subject line. You can rename the subject if you like.

DO:
-hit your Forward button from the e-mail you are reading. It enables your recipient to see the page you actually wish them to view and they don’t have to open 10 pages in order to get to the relevant one.

DO:
-skip the petitions. If you wish to add your signature to a petition, send an individual letter to the intended recipient and by doing so, your letter will have more weight and value. In addition, you prevent some spammer from getting a valuable list of e-mail addresses.

DO:
-delete the ‘send this e-mail to 10 people and something wonderful will happen to you!’ Same goes for the ones that claim ‘you will have bad luck for fifty years if you don’t forward them to 10 friends’, put ‘em in the trash!

DO:
-do your homework. Before you forward the latest ‘Virus Alert’, check them out! Most of them are junk mail that have been circulating the Internet for years. If you have any doubt, go to www.snopes.com or www.truthorfiction.com and you can find out if it’s for real or a hoax.

Hope that helps!

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Kate V. Kerans
Kerans Virtual Assistance

Always good reminders. Thanks for posting

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Lily Chambers, The Virtual Office Goddess, LLC
Author "How to Do Your Own Small Business Bookkeeping"

Great reminders/tips. I hate receiving those emails that were not checked on snopes first!!

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Dawn Riley
A Virtual Assistant in Paradise
Our business is about making yours better

great refresher. Thanks for posting!

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Bette Creek
http://bettecreek.blogspot.com/
www.ashbusinessservices.com

Great information! People have become so LAZY with email - this is yet another way to help set yourself apart as a true professional.
Thanks Kate!

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Is it appropriate to "reply all" with the snopes link about a bogus virus? I did this a few times but then felt bad like I might be embarassing the person who originally sent the email to me and 8,000 other people!

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Administrative Support Group
Jenifer D

Hi Jenifer,

I don't think it would be considered inappropriate as long as you worded your response in a tactful manner. I think most people would appreciate knowing about bogus viruses, alerts, etc, and know they too, can go to snopes and check out these things for themselves.

It might also serve as a gentle reminder for the sender of the original email to check out their facts before forwarding wrong information to everyone they know.

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Kate V. Kerans
Kerans Virtual Assistance

GREAT article. I always get annoyed when I receive emails with tons of leftovers. I always trash them without even reading it.

I have been meaning to find out how to use Blind Carbon Copy in Outlook - anyone know how?

Brenda, I think it depends on what version of Outlook you have, but I can tell you how it works with mine. I have Outlook 2000 and if you compose a new e-mail, the CC and BCC fields automatically appear underneath the TO: field.

If your BCC field is not showing up, go to the 'View' drop down menu and the BCC option can be checked and it will now appear automatically when you compose a new e-mail.

To familiarize myself with using the BCC field, when I sent a new e-mail to someone, I would BCC myself using an alternate e-mail account just to test try it out. If you go back and look at your original e-mail, you will note that it doesn't show anywhere you have also sent it to yourself (hence the 'blind' part of the BCC) and double-check that you did, in fact, receive the extra blind copy on your other e-mail account.

Hope that makes sense and doesn't just confuse you further, lol!

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Kate V. Kerans
Kerans Virtual Assistance

if you click on the To: field it will be an option in that next window.

To:
Cc:
Bcc:

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Administrative Support Group
Jenifer D