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Have you ever received an email message with 200 people on the To or CC list? This can be a real annoyance. Not only can it take a long time to scroll through the lists of recipients, but this list (which is irrelevant to you) can increase your download time and clog up your email storage quota.
Have you ever sent an email message with a long list of recipients and wished that there were a better way of handling the list? You know how you feel when you receive a message like that -- so you don't want to irritate those who receive your message -- and anyway, it's nobody else's business, really, who you're sending the message to. Isn't there a better way?
Fortunately, there are several possible solutions, depending on your email program and/or ISP.
- If your email program and/or server allows you to create mailing lists/groups, this may be a solution. For example, you might set up PCCC as a group, and list all PCCC members. Then, when you key PCCC in the To field, the email message is sent to all PCCC members. This is really good if you don't want to select individuals each time -- i.e., if you want to send the message to the same people every time. The main drawback is that you need to be diligent in maintaining the list -- adding newcomers and/or deleting those who should no longer be receiving your mailings. Also, if you use the list to forward information that you receive from members on the list, some people will receive the same information they contributed. Another potential problem is that some email programs do not handle these lists well -- instead of just showing the list name in the To or CC field when the message is sent, the list name is replaced by each individual's email address -- creating the exact problem that you were trying to avoid in the first place. Therefore, before using this method, you may want to experiment with your email program to determine if (and how) it handles mailing lists/groups. For example, my mainframe email at work allows me to create distinct mailing lists -- and the individual names do not show up on the actual messages. However, on both my LotusNotes email at work and my Netscape Communicator email at home, I can create lists/groups, but when I click on Send, the list name is replaced by the individual names and addresses.
- Another solution is to simply BCC (blind carbon copy) the recipients. This works quite well on most email programs. Sometimes, however, the BCC function isn't well documented. For example, on both AOL and Juno, you can change a CC to a BCC by putting parentheses around the email address. Depending on your email program, the copy of the message that is retained in your Sent file may or may not show the recipient names. A potential problem to using the BCC method is that your email program may not permit you to send BCCs without including something in the To field. That brings us to the next solution.
- You can create a 'dummy' entry in your Address Book -- I call mine "Recipient List Suppressed" -- using your own email address. You then type this entry into the To field, and then add all the BCCs that you want -- and voila, the recipients receive a nice, clean header, showing only your Recipient List Suppressed address in the To field and their own name/address in the BCC field. Clean, simple, and to the point. This is the method I've been using for several months now -- and the only drawback I'm aware of is that you receive a copy of each message (in addition to the one that automatically is saved in the Sent file) -- but that's a minor price to pay to make it a LOT easier for your recipients.
One final tip -- if you're forwarding a message that already has multiple entries in the To field, or one that has been forwarded many times, PLEASE strip it and only send the relevant portion of the message. Most recipients don't care that it Jane has fowarded it to Susie, who then forwarded it to 10 of her closest friends, and then George forwarded it to you -- they just want to read the essence of the message. YOU can make it easier for them!
We're all receiving more and more emails every day -- and it's all too easy to decide to NOT plod through lengthy headers to get to the meat of a message -- so if you want your recipients to read your email, try to simplify the headers if you can!