NEW TO EMAIL

TOPS PRODUCTIVITY SPECIALISTS

New to email?

Some hints and tips to make life easier for you - and those you communicate with.

No one tells you about these things when you first start, but if you follow these tips, life will be so much easier.

1) Sending to a list - without disclosing everyone else's address

2) Reply or forwarding email - without upsetting anyone

3) The subject line - leave it empty at your peril!

4) Creating folders to sort or file your incoming emails, create address lists etc

5) Automatic filing on receipt

SENDING TO A LIST

You will no doubt use several lists and these can be automated, but of more importance is that when sending an email, there are three options - not two, at the top of your outgoing emails

a) At the top, is the field marked "To".

b) Below that is "Cc" - an abbreviation of carbon copy.

If you put more than one name into either of these fields, ALL the internet addresses of everyone on your list is passed on to all the other recipients. That means that if you send out to your club or contacts list of 300 people, every one on that list gets everyone else's email address - and that compromises privacy, and opens the list up to spammers, the curse of the internet.

Depending on your system, there should also be another option

c) "Bcc" - Blind carbon copy.

This is exactly what it says - blind. It hides all the addresses from all other recipients and is the only option you should use when sending to people who may not know each other.

Now, the usual problem is that when you first use your email, that third option for the blind carbon copy may not appear! If using Outlook or Outlook Express, then open up as though writing a new email, go to the top of the page and click on "view" - you should get a list of options (you may need to expand the list by clicking on the small downward arrow) and just check the 'Bcc' field.

That is it. When you then go to your address book to add the recipients for your email, just move all recipients to the 'Bcc' field and you can leave the other two options blank. You do NOT need an address in the 'To' field.

If using an email system other than Outlook, please ask around for the exact details, but all systems have that facility.

REPLY TO or FORWARDING EMAILS

In general terms, if you are going to reply to a long email, especially one containing entry lists, catalogues, newsletters etc, then the person who sent it to you has already read it! Why would they want it back again?

If you are just adding a short comment or are editing it, then delete the received content before replying. Its quite simple...

If you are forwarding the email to someone else, then the subject line will often automatically place "Fwd" at the beginning, but this is a ploy often used by spammers, and a high proportion of Spam has "Fwd" at the beginning and therefore alerts the Spam filters, which could lead to it being dumped. The same applies to "Re:"

Beware also, that if forwarding, ALL email addresses that were in the header, will also be passed on, ALONG WITH YOUR OWN. Delete these other email addresses before you pass it on - especially if it is a funny. Your list will no doubt be vastly different from the list of of the person who sent it to you.

THE SUBJECT LINE

If you leave this blank, more modern Spam filters may assume that this is Spam, and delete the mail. By filling in the subject line, you also assist in the recipient finding it or filing it. If you receive lots of email, say over 20 a day, then without a subject line, the inbox fills up very quickly and finding an email weeks or months later is almost impossible.

If you use a regular key word or phrase in the subject line, it assists in automatic filing. For example, if sending out regular emails to members of the ERC SERIES, or the TOPS4JAZZ email list, then if each email sent out starts with those words, then it not only identifies the email straightaway, but also opens up the options for automatic filing or sorting.

CREATING FOLDERS

Unless you tell your system otherwise, it stores all files into default folders, and that means "my pictures", "my documents' etc., but in the case of emails, you have effectively, three main sections.

a) contacts - that is your address book

b) inbox - all your incoming mail

c) sent items - copies of all your outgoing mail

If like me, you have email correspondence to and from family and friends, work, and then hobby stuff, sport etc, then it makes sense to sort it all into folders and Outlook can do this automatically, but before it can, you must create the folder!

There are two or three methods here. You need to set the view to show the various Folders. To set up the inbox first, move the mouse to the Inbox folder and left click and release. This should highlight the Inbox folder.

Either:

Go to the top left corner and left click on 'File'
just let the cursor roll to the various options - 'new', 'Folder'
left click again and you'll be presented with a box to fill in to name it.
Type in 'Family', or 'Work' or whatever
And you'll place this in the inbox section.

1) Go to the 'inbox' and right click the mouse

2 - 5 - as above

Go to the top left corner and left click on 'File'
just let the cursor roll to the various options - 'new', 'Folder'
use CTRL, SHIFT, E and the remainder will be the same as above.

Having created your first folder, repeat for any others.

To move messages, you simply highlight them and drag them over, or you can be really smart and get the system to move them automatically on receipt...

AUTOMATIC FILING ON RECEPT

This is probably one of the most useful aspects of Outlook. If like me you have several different interests, the folder you create for your messages means that those who constantly send you funnies, but rarely anything of significant, can have all their messages to you parked into your Funnies folder to be read at your leisure. In work, you may have some top clients who send you regular orders and you need to deal with them before those of lesser significance.

If so, create a folder just for them and put a number before the name 01. (Using 01 rather than 1 means that when you get to number 10, it will follow number nine and not number 1...)

1) Having created the folder open up a message from that person.

Note the Create Rule icon.

2) Click on the icon and you can follow the steps whereby all messages from a particular sender can be directed. Just click on the blue underlined areas for the options such as the destination folder.

3) You can also specify that when certain words appear in the subject line, the message is automatically filed - see above. By doing that, you don't need to create a rule for each sender.