How-to Articles

• Email Etiquette - Part 1

• Signatures in Outlook
   

Email Etiquette - Part 1
By Sue Sledge

Do you really know how to forward e-mails? Some do, some don’t.

Do you get viruses, spam or junk mail?  Every time you forward an email there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their email addresses and names.  As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for one recipient to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every email address that has come across that computer.  Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that one will go to that site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience for a nickel! How do you stop it?  Well, there are several easy steps:

(a) When you forward an email, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, or cut them.  It only takes a second. But, you MUST click the "Forward" button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message.  If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be able to edit the message at all. 

(b) Remove any "FW :" in the subject line.  You can also re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

(c) ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual email you are reading.  By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mail windows just to see what you sent.

Would you like to have a signature ready to add to your outgoing e-mail?  They’re easy to create in Outlook.  Here are the steps:  

1. Open Outlook.
2. On the main menu bar at the top of your screen, click on Tools --> Options.
3. Click on the Mail Format tab.
4. Click the Signatures button.
5. Click New.
6. Give it a name.
7. Click Start with a blank signature.
8. Click Next.
9. Type in your information.  You may choose fonts if you wish.
10. Click Finish.
11. Click OK.
12. You should be back in the Mail Format tab.
13. Select the signature that you created from the drop down list Signatures for new messages and click OK.
14. You may also select a different signature to use when you reply to a message by selecting a signature from the drop down list Signatures for replies and forwards.

The next time you start a new e-mail message, your signature will appear.  You may delete or modify it as you choose.  You may create more than one signature.  You can insert the signature of your choice by going to Insert a Signature while you are in a new message. You can designate different signatures for new messages and replies by setting the options in the Signatures section of the Mail Format tab.