Email Etiquette
Most important; security & safety
Avoid replying to emails with other peoples names &
addresses in the email. If you want to forward something, copy/paste it
into a new email and use the Bcc option when selecting your recipients. Doing
this will reduce the number of spam emails everyone gets. Many email harvesters
will start a cute email and hope that people forward it on to their friends
& family, eventually the email gets back to the harvester and now he has
all the email addresses that were attached along the way. By using the Bcc
option, no names will appear on the email except from the originator.
Learn the proper usage of the “reply all” option.
This option is used when you want to send a reply to everyone that the email was
sent to. Don’t use this option unless you want everyone in the email to
get your reply.
File attachments, well there is a lot to say about
attachments. It is good policy to send a pre-notification email indicating
your intention of sending a file attachment. Many folks are a little skittish
about opening file attachments in their emails, many folks have been told to
never open attachments, well they could be missing out on legitimate family
photos, professional illustrations or a multitude of information &
entertainment.
Your mailbox has a limited capacity! Most ISPs will
provide on average a 5 MB mailbox for each user. It’s a good idea to
check to see how big your mailbox is and also find out if the mail you delete
is still in the mailbox or if it is deleted totally. If you have a 5 MB mailbox
and someone sends you an email with an attachment of 6 MB, you may not get the
attachment or maybe you won’t even get the email. Many folks will use the
email system for sending photos to friends & family. There are many
considerations when sending photos. To begin with, most folks will send a photo
straight out of their photo program, this may work for some situations, however
not for all. It is good policy to reduce the photo before sending it, not only
does this reduce the size of the file but it will also provide a means for
which anyone can view the entire photo without scrolling up & down the
screen. A good resolution for photos is 600X400 pixels at a resolution of no
more than 150 dpi. Some photos downloaded directly out of the camera can be as
large as 7 MB or more!
Spam hurts everyone! Because there is so much spam
going around today, some ISPs will reject emails with too many addresses listed
in the “To” box, this appears to the ISP as spam. Keep your list of recipients
short, maybe 5 to 10 names at a time. Also remember to use the Bcc function
when sending emails out to many recipients.
Backup your address book! No one ever expects to get
a virus, however it happens everyday. Many viruses when inside your system will
attack your email address book. Most will use the names in your book for
mailing itself out in an effort to prolific ate itself, others will destroy the
data in it, yes I mean destroy. You should backup your address book
anytime you add a contact or name. Outlook will allow you to export you address
book to a file, this file should be burned onto a CD or copied to a floppy
disk, Some cheaper systems no longer have floppy disk drives, but if you have a
floppy disk drive it is an inexpensive way of retaining your address book. It
is also a good idea to write down all your contacts in a “black book” and keep
it in your desk or other secure location.
Remember to use your email wisely!
For additional information contact your computer service provider.