Tips for Avoiding Common Email Pitfalls

Take a moment to review your email habits before hitting the "Send" button

Patrick Chinn
pchinn@oregon.uoregon.edu

Electronic mail is now a common form of communication, yet many email users are unfamiliar with some of its common pitfalls. The unfortunate mix of unsophisticated users and sophisticated email software can result in unreadable messages, clogged servers, and possible embarrassment. This article describes some of the most common email problems we see at the university and offers suggestions for avoiding them.

File Attachments

Files attached to email messages have the potential to cause a variety of problems, including:

• Size: Attachments can be large and fill the recipient's inbox, blocking the receipt of future messages. To prevent users from filling another person's account, we limit the size of file attachments to 2MB or less.
  
• Readability: Some attachments can't be opened and used by the recipient.
  Before sending a file as an attachment, contact the recipient to see if he or she can handle that type of document. Avoid sending attachments to large mailing lists (see "Mailing lists" below). A possible solution: cut and paste just the contents of the file into the body of the email message itself.
  
• Mailing lists: Sending a large attachment to a large number of recipients, either through a private list or through a listserv, can cause network delays or failures as the server attempts to process the data.
  
• Computer viruses: If your computer is infected with a virus, you may infect those who open email attachments you send. To avoid this problem, don't send files as attachments and use antivirus software.
  
  Alternatives to email attachments do exist. If many people need access to a file, put the file itself or the contents of the file on a web page and email the web page address to the group. Darkwing, Gladstone, and Oregon email accounts can be used to host web pages. For more information on how to host a web page, see http://cc.uoregon.edu/documents.html
  

HTML-Formatted Messages

Email messages formatted using HTML (the format used to create web pages) are often unreadable by recipients. The key to using HTML email successfully is to know your audience. Before sending an HTML-formatted message, ask yourself, "Do I know for certain that the recipient(s) can read this message?" If the answer is no, use plain text.

Regrettably, several email programs format messages with HTML by default. Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express are the most common culprits. (The default can be changed. In Outlook XP, go to Tools -> Options ->Mail Format and select "Plain Text." In Outlook Express 6 go to Tools ->Options ->Send and select "Plain Text.")

Reply to All

When replying to an email message, double-check the address to which your reply will be sent. Users embarrass themselves daily by sending replies to a group or a list rather than the specific individual. Checking the email addresses on your reply before clicking the "send" button can prevent possible mortification. (Generally there is no way to recall or delete a message once it has been sent.)

"Me Too"

Avoid the temptation to reply with nothing more than "me too." If a reply is necessary, snip out some or most of the original email message, leaving only the pertinent question or statement. This saves bandwidth.

Off-Topic Messages

When posting a message to an email list, ask yourself, "Does the topic of my message fit the subject or scope of this email list?" If not, find a more appropriate forum. At the minimum, state at the beginning that your message is off-topic.

Vacation Messages

Some people use the "vacation" program when they are out of the office. (When a new message is received, the server automatically sends a "Sorry, I'm out of the office until next week" message.) This feature is especially troublesome if you are subscribed to a list because your vacation response may be sent out each time you receive a message from that list. A user subscribed to a busy list could easily generate a hundred or more vacation messages to a group of people who do not care that you are vacationing in Atlantic City until Thursday. We recommend unsubscribing yourself from email lists before leaving on vacation.

Note: The vacation program is available only on Darkwing and Gladstone. It is not available on Oregon.

Conclusion

Taking a moment to review your email habits before hitting the "Send" button can save you, and those on your mailing list, a lot of grief in the long run.