7 Deadly Sins Of Email -Deadly Sins #7

DEADLY SIN #7 – FORWARDING WITH ADDRESSES INCLUDED

Apart from cluttering the message up, this is another way that email addresses can end up on an infected computer for harvesting and used to propagate malicious content or spam.

Respect Privacy It’s also a way to give away a person’s email address to someone else on your mailing list without permission. In the illustration, there’s a whole list of names (the addresses can be seen with a quick mouse click) of people that I wouldn’t know from Adam. Supposing Felisa Stokes was my ex-partner and she wanted to remain non-contactable by me?

Clean up messages before you forward them! Doesn’t take much to delete the headers, addresses and anything unwanted at the end of the message before hitting the ‘Send’ button.

7 Deadly Sins Of Email…Deadly Sins#6

DEADLY SIN #6 – SHARING YOUR ADDRESS BOOK WITH THE WORLD

Don’t just add all the addresses into the To or CC fields.

Use the BCC Field

By sending messages BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) to multiple addresses, the list of addresses is not included for the recipients. It requires a few extra clicks of the mouse, but what price privacy?

Here’s how to do it:

1. Click on the To button, which is next to the To field

2. This will bring up your Address Book and all the options for where to place the addresses, including the BCC field which is normally hidden.

   

3. Select the addresses you want to include and click the Bcc button for each one added to the list.

4. When you’ve finished adding addresses, click on the ‘OK’ button.

5. Finish off your message and send it.

Recipients will receive their copy of the message with “undisclosed recipients” showing in the ‘To’ field. No other addresses will be broadcast for all to see.

Get Clever – Use Mailing List and Alias Addresses

If you want to find out how to set up a mailing list and use an alias of your own address, then have a look at the article Using Mailing Lists.

You will be able to send to multiple address mail-outs that show something like “My friends” in the ‘To’ field – and still not disclose all the addresses to everybody.

7 Deadly Sins Of Email -Deadly Sins #5

DEADLY SINS #5 – SENDING ATTACHMENTS THAT CAN’T BE OPENED

There are few file formats that are universal though, with everybody that has Internet access and Windows able to open and read.

Rich Text (rtf) – can be opened and read in any word processor software, including WordPad which is included with the Windows operating system.

So, when you’ve finished typing that document you are going to send as an attachment, save it in Rich Text format. You will be limited in the formatting that can be applied, but at least the recipient will be able to read it.

PDF – files can be opened with the free Adobe Reader, also usually installed along with the operating system. Adobe Reader can be downloaded easily if someone doesn’t have it installed.

You can also get free PDF creator programs easily. Convert your document to a PDF file before sending it. PDF’s can be created from desk top publishing programs such as Publisher or Serif Page Plus. Excel files can be converted to PDF too.

Free PDF Programs:

http://www.pdf995.com/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

http://www.cutepdf.com/

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/PDF/PDFFree.shtml

Once you’ve installed a PDF creator, you create the PDF file from the Print command.

File/Print and then change the printer selection to the PDF creator program:

HTML – everybody with an Internet browser can open an HTML file. So, you could create an HTML file from your original, many Office programs will convert to HTML directly from within the program.

If you know that your recipient has all the software necessary to read the file you are going to send, no need to convert it. Any doubt – send in a format that is pretty universal. PDF is one of the best for sending with fully preserved layout, images and fonts. Watch out for the file size though!

7 Deadly Sins Of Email -Deadly Sins #4

DEADLY SIN #4 – USING HTML FOR ALL MESSAGES

The worst offenders for large attachments are pictures and PowerPoint shows.

There’s some simple things that you can do to avoid larger-than-needed file attachments.

1. Pictures should be resized (unless quality is paramount). Whether they are sent as standalone attachments or inserted into documents. Pictures taken straight from a digital camera will often be way too big to use without resizing. Changing the size is easy though.

• Windows XP offers an option to change a picture size for emailing.

• Right click on the image file and choose Send To, then Mail Recipient

• Windows will bring up a dialogue box to resize the picture.

The other method, which I like, is to use a free program that is just for resizing. Photo Gadget is free and very effective. Once installed, it creates an additional option on the right-click context menu of images.

• Right-click the image file.

• Choose Photo Gadget Picture Resize from the menu.

• For most emails, the default size of 640×480 is absolutely fine.

• Photo Gadget saves a copy of the picture at the smaller size and names it the same as the original with the size added. This is useful if you might want to send the picture more than once.

• For inserting pictures in documents, consider using the smallest size of 240×320

You will be amazed at the difference in file sizes when they are resized this way.

Download Photo Gadget from here: http://www.xemico.com/photogadget/

PowerPoint Shows are another problem, big file sizes that are often just a recycled joke madder into a presentation. Not much you can do about the sizes, apart from if it’s you that creates the presentations out of jokes. If it is, stop it!

Finally, all those short video clips that get sent around. They are often big files, and most of them aren’t that interesting. Only send them if you really think the person on the receiving end is going to appreciate it. If it’s to me – ask me first!

Think before you send that huge file. Think about the person receiving it.