Top 7 email tips for office users
Below are some points I remember every time I send a mail.
- Don't enter the email address into to or cc before composing the mail. There is a chance to hit ctrl+enter (send) any time. Leading to half composed mails being sent. Hence compose the mails first. Then add to and cc
- Attach the attachments first or you may forget to attach
- Don't paste the screen shots directly into a mail. While using mail clients like Outlook or Thunderbird there is tendency to paste the image directly into mail. This causes slow opening of mail and unnecessary scrolling. Irritates reader on internet (may be fine in intranet). Sometimes the user may not be interested in screen shot. Better way would be save the screen shot as image with proper name. And then attach it as attachment
- Enable spell and grammar check always
- When sending a single line messages use subject line. If don’t have any content for the body of the mail then end the subject line with <eom>. <eom> signifies end of mail
- Use ALT + Print Screen to take the screen shots
- You can use save attachments feature in outlook (gmail too) to download all attachments at once
If you have such tips which can help users to communicate better post them in comments section.
1. How and when to use “To”, “CC” and “BCC”
a. The names in the “To” field is used to address people who are the primary stakeholders of the information exchanged in the email.
b. The names in the “Cc” (Carbon copy) field is used to address people who are the secondary stakeholders of the information. Secondary stakeholders are the people who need to be in the loop, but don’t perform any actions based on that information. Typically these people are your group leads, Project managers, quality manager and any other higher ups.
c. The “Bcc” (Bulk carbon copy) field is used to address people in Bulk. The names listed in the BCC field is not shown in the email that each adressee received. Hence addressees in the BCC field are the ones who just need to be notified, but are in no way the stake holders of the information.
For example, if you are sending a “Minutes of Meeting”(MOM) document, you can add the ID of members who attended the meeting into the “To” field, your group leader’s / project manager’s / quality manager’s ID into the CC field (since they may need to know about the outcome of the meeting) and your Configuration manager in the BCC field (if the document needs to be archived). It is advisible to use BCC field when you are forwarding some nice article your friend forwarded to you or downloaded from the internet. If you are sending it to a huge group of friends, especially when you are forwarding the mail to his/her office ID, your friend may not like you advertizing his/her email ID to anyone and everyone. In such cases its best to use the BCC field.
2. Its always better to use neutral gender or use “his/her” when talking of someone in third person. You may say I’m over-reacting, but when it comes to official mails its always better to be careful than get sued. The addressee may always raise a gender bias issue.
Try to be specific when writing a subject of your mail. There’s nothing more annoying then “Question” or “FYI” or “Interesting!” as a subject. Imagine that you’re writing a title for a blog post. :)
I think BCC stands for “Blind Carbon Copy” and is primarily used when you want to hide the recipients. In business correspondence it is usually not considered polite to use BCC field.
A slight correction – BCC is Blind Carbon Copy – i.e. anyone in the To: or CC: list is unaware that anyone mentioned in the BCC Addressee list has also seen a copy……i.e. they are “blind” to it.
How to recover Shift + Deleted mails???
1. Start –> Run
2. Run the command regedit.exe.
3. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options
4. Add a new string ‘DumpsterAlwaysON’ of type REG_DWORD with the value 1 in Hex
5. Close the registry editor.
6. Restart Outlook.
7. Go to Tools –> Recover Deleted Items.
for BCC it can be “Block” also.
So it will “Block Carbon Copy” ids
Yes. BCC means Blind carbon copy.
@grigor: Better subject line is like good title.