It is not uncommon for office workers to receive hundreds of emails on a daily basis. Most of these are just noise that distract rather help with the tasks. Many are due to the excessive use of the Outlook Reply All feature. When people receive a message, they feel the need to reply to everyone in the recipients list instead of focusing on the person who sent the message. This produces a snowball effect wherein the volume of emails being sent back and forth swamp everyone, including disinterested parties. Below are some tips to keep in mind when deal with this feature:
Never Use It Unless You Have To
Not every email deserves or needs a reply. Most are just for your information so you don’t have to do anything after reading them. If you do need to respond, then make our default be to reply to the sender only. Leave everyone out of your message composition. For example, your manager may have sent an email to the whole team. If you have a question about the message, then reply to your manager alone and include your query. Do not press Outlook Reply All since this will include the whole team. You might not even realize it while discussing sensitive matters.
Disable the Feature to Avoid Accidents
A lot of people have gotten into trouble for sending email blasts that were meant for one specific person. If you want to avoid this accident, then you can try disabling the feature in the program. Customize the Ribbon so as to disable the Reply All button. It should be grayed out or become invisible when you go back to the main window. The same trick can be employed for other types of email client since this is a common concern among users.
Get Automatic Alerts for Confirmation
Disabling this feature is an extreme solution that may not work for some. After all, there are a few cases wherein you really do need to reply to everyone in the recipients list. So how do you avoid accidents while keeping this ability? The answer is automatic alerts. You can install an add-on to notify you when you pick this option just to confirm that this was intentional. This prevents wrong clicks and potentially embarrassing outcomes.
As you can see, there are different levels of safeguards when using Outlook. Select the one that feels appropriate for you needs.