Email Etiquette V

Further to my previous issues this subject continues – as per request from a reader.

This month I’ll share on Setting up Mail groups and creating signatures for your email.

Creating a mail group might differ, depending on the program you use, but for this exercise we’ll use Outlook as the program as it is a widely used email program. Why would you use a mail group? So that you don’t have to go through your address book selecting everyone that belongs to a particular group or listing – the same person could be listed with several different groups. Far quicker when sending an email to the whole list to just select the name of that list instead.

If you click on the Tools menu, and select Address Book, then File, New Entry, you will see you have two choices: New Contact, or New Distribution list.

Selecting Distribution List brings up a new window where you can name that list, and then select names from your address book to add to that list. Once completed, save and close and you will notice that the new Distribution List shows in bold in your address book listing. Now, when you want to send to that group, you just select, or type, the name of that group in the BCC field, not the TO field. Why? Because Outlook will proceed to grab all the individual addresses of each member of that group and enter them in the TO field when sending the email – every recipient will see the addresses of the rest of the group. Hence why it is important to use BCC even when using a group name.

Signatures

It is good to experiment with your signature style – have a look at what others do so you can decide what you do and don’t like. You can use colour, different font formats, and even add a graphic. You may have to check your menus in Outlook but in 2000, to create a signature, you can click on Tools, Options, then select Mail Format, then Signature Picker and New. Depending on the options you chose when installing Outlook, a simple editor, or Word may open. Write your signature block, give it a name and save it. You can also choose (after saving) whether the signature block will be used on Replies and Forwards for email. This detail is simplified – if you need detailed assistance, please call me or email me for further instruction.