Why not just have an easy button that you can click saying Do Not Allow Reply All?
I know that there are some ways you can limit reply-all availability, like in the URL linked here. But there’s a note: If recipients open this email in other mail applications except Microsoft Outlook, such as opening on web page via web mailbox, they can reply all this email.
I’m semi-tech savvy but I’m no programmer. It feels like it should be easy to do, so either I’m totally wrong or email services are really missing out on a great thing they could do.
Step 1: draft an email to yourself
Step 2: put all recipients in the BCC
Step 3: now “reply all” does jack shit
I use BCC semi-frequently at work because it prevents all kinds of (mostly unintentional) annoyances from my coworkers. Mostly with automated emails related to reports and/or our case management system. BCC is your best friend when used selectively.
My favorite thing is when I notice the chain is emailing people who don’t need to see it and Reply All after moving them to BCC (I add a note saying “moved X to BCC” for transparency).
People love me :-)
Just don’t use it for mass mailing external addresses. That’ll get you on a blacklist faster than you’d think.
Just don’t use it for mass mailing external addresses. That’ll get you on a blacklist faster than you’d think.
What do you mean by this?
I just get users messaging me to ask “is this spam?” since there’s no one in the To: section or they weren’t in the CC or To section.
But I still do it to avoid this type of crap.
You can put in the first line of your message body:
<group of people> in bcc
Here’s my snarky take on it:
Because it’s not the job of the mail client to decide what parts of the protocol should be hidden from stupid users.
The solution is if you’re sending a mass email that shouldn’t be replied to you use BCC. So it’s really the sender’s fault
Outlook does give a warning now if you’re sending to a distro list
As the other commentors have said, this isn’t a problem with email services, it’s a problem with email users. If you put all the addresses in the “To:” or “CC:” boxes, its because you want someone to Reply All. If you want to prevent that, put all the recipients in the BCC box.
Its a good idea, but fortunately someone already solved it a good while back. Now we just need a PSA to teach people to stop cramming everyone in the wrong box.
People in my organization do this, and it’s great. The only downside to that is when you want recipients to know exactly who else the email was sent to. Not super common, in my experience, but it does occur.
When I do bcc to a big list, I describe the distribution in the email header. Like “To: all users of the xxx application” or “To: All Engineering employees at the yyy site.”
My wife and I were doing big renovations on our home and were dealing with lots of contractors. I would email them and include my wife’s email. Yet every contractor failed to press reply all when responding so my wife was constantly left out of the loop
It turns out people just don’t care to think about or understand basic technology.
This stuff really needs to be taught in school (like how we used to have typing and business communication classes)
I kind of think that contractors not being well versed in digital things is to be expected.
Is this from that one about that lunch thing where people ignored when told to only reply to that one guy. It gave me a bit of enjoyment this week.
There’s a special hell for everyone sharing tips to stop people from reply all’ing
Why? BCC is the solution and has been part of email since at least 1990. I’m not condoning a dogpile on OP, but this is a solved problem.
