Email Tricks

No More Forwarding ... Do your friends a favor, and forget that forward button exists the next time you are tempted to send that nifty little joke or inspirational email to everyone listed in your address book! How many times have you received the same thing umpteen times, usually from well meaning friends who think the Forward button was put there just to make it easier to share this particular moment. They probably had to wade through 15 feet of headers indicating the number of times it had been forwarded before. That is, if they had the strength or inclination to even bother scrolling to where the “good stuff” was in the first place.
Another problem with forwarding email that has already been forwarded many times before is that many of the people on the receiving end will lose the original message entirely. Outlook users receive forwarded emails from other programs (like Outlook Express, AOL, Netscape, Eudora, etc) as file attachments. Every time an email is forwarded, it becomes a separate email attachment, adding itself to each previous attachment. Think of it as an attachment to an attachment, to another attachment. You can bet that most people will not open more than three additional email attachments to get to the message you thought was cute enough to forward in the first place.

The only emails you should ever consider forwarding are “first generation” or original emails. Forwarding should be the exception, not the rule. The only reason should be the recipient actually needing to see all the details of the original message. And I mean ALL the details, including who received the original. With casual emails, this is not only not necessary, it could be considered lazy or rude.

There is a better way!

Your friends will love you for it! Be considerate of their valuable time and computer resources and use Copy and Paste to just get the “good stuff” from that email you want to share. Not only will the need to scroll be eliminated, but you will also not be sharing hundreds of other email addresses from all the previous forwards. These can be a goldmine for potential spammers. Heck! All they need to do is copy and paste and they have a fresh list of email addresses to send all sorts of crap to.

1. Begin by clicking once with the left mouse button just to the left of where you want to begin highlighting.
2. While holding down the left mouse button drag to the right and down until what you want is highlighted. When you have it, let go of the mouse button.
3. Press CTRL+C to copy the highlighted stuff to the clipboard. You can close that email at that time. All you want is in your computer’s memory until you are ready for it.
4. Begin a new email. Put who you want to send it to in the TO: box. Make sure you don’t neglect the Subject box.
5. Click once in the main message area so you see the blinking cursor. This is where you can type an introduction to what you are sending. Hit the Enter key a couple of times to put a few spaces between your remarks and the text.
6. Press CTRL+V to paste the text you have stored on your clipboard.
7. Hit the Send button and you are done!

Need more Copy and Paste control?

Everyone who has ever highlighted text to copy and paste has run into this little challenge. You are highlighting your little heart out. Everything seems to be going fine until you get to the bottom of the screen. There is more to highlight, so while keeping your finger on that left mouse button, you continue moving the pointer down and to the right. Your mouse goes bonkers and the screen scrolls uncontrollably, causing you to let go of the mouse button. Clicking anywhere in the area you already have highlighted causes the highlighting to disappear. The only cure is to start over. Ugh!
Use your keyboard when you need more control over what you are highlighting.

1. Click once with the left mouse button where you want to begin.
2. While holding down the Shift key, use the down arrows on your keyboard to highlight one line at a time. If you have a lot to highlight, just hold the down arrow until you get where you want to be. To get the last few stragglers at the end of a line (if you need to), use the right arrow key. To back up, use the left arrow key. As long as you hold the Shift key, you are in complete control!

Make sure the original message is included when you reply ... Have mercy on people you reply to by including the original message in your reply. They may not remember what they wrote in the first place. A one or two line reply can be cryptic to a person who sends and receives hundreds of emails a day and looking up the original email just isn’t practical.

AOL ... Highlight the text you want to reply to before you hit the Reply button. This will place the text in the main message area of your email reply with the date and time the person you are replying to wrote it. The blinking cursor will be immediately below the original message. Scroll up to the top of the main message area and click once to the left of the original message. Then hit the Enter key a couple of times to bring it down a bit. Use the Up Arrow key to move the blinking cursor up to the top and type your reply. This way your reply will be at the top when your reply is received. The person who receives it can then scroll down if they need to see what they said the first time around. This is also great when you need to document the original text for one reason or another. Always make sure your reply is at the top of the message so the recipient sees your message first.

Sending photos and other graphics ... Most email programs have managed to make it very easy for people to insert images right into the body of their email message. Unfortunately, not everyone uses the same email program. AOL users can send images embedded in their messages to other AOL’ers with no problems viewing on the receiving end. Outlook or Outlook Express recipients may only see an “Unable to display Message” message where the picture ought to be. Similar problems can occur for AOL users receiving email from Outlook and other email programs. In those instances, the AOL user may receive the file, but it will be as an attachment. If an Outlook (or other email program) user has added fancy backgrounds and text, it will be added to the attachment and zipped up for the AOL user, causing confusion to say the least. The cure is to always attach any graphics as a separate file. This way anyone can download and view it, no matter what.

Non-AOL email users should send only plain text email messages to AOL recipients. It's the polite thing to do. This will keep any background graphics and other special formatting from being turned into attached files and adding to the confusion.

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