Email Threads:
You may have heard people talk about email threads. This means keeping the subject alive, usually with the same subject header. Youâll find it a great way to keep the sense of a discussion. However, there are a few simple techniques to make sure it is truly useful.
1. Delete irrelevant material from the mail youâre replying to â this saves unnecessary bulk. Many users pay by the amount of data they download, and if someone has a slow connection itâs very frustrating to have to wait while old material bounces back. Itâs especially important to delete irrelevant attachments and bulky html files, or strip them down to the bare bones.
2. If the subject has changed, due to new information, change the subject header to reflect the topic.
3. Donât reply unless itâs going to add something of value. Avoid the ping-pong of âthank you,â âyes, thank youâ,âŚ.
Drafts
Suppose you havenât finished an email, but have to leave your machine. Always save it. If the machine has to be closed down, your message will wait patiently for you in your Draft folder. Donât put it into âSend Laterâ unless youâve finished it â it will head out to the world as soon as youâre next online, finished or not. The trap, however, is that you forget the draft is there, and days later find, to your embarrassment, that the mail you thought youâd sent is quietly hibernating! Iâve done it myself a couple of times â oh dear!
Another point about saving â get into the habit of saving constantly as you type, even email. Especially if itâs an important letter youâre writing, or a long one, youâll be very brassed off if your machine crashes and you have to go back into Ace Reporter mode again (especially if youâre not a fast typist).
Another useful facet of leaving something in the Draft folder is when youâre working on an ongoing document, and know you wonât be ready to send the finished matter for some days. For instance, as Iâm working on my website, I sometimes notice things I want to tweak. I start an email to my webmaster, and let it wait in the Draft folder until Iâve got enough to justify sending him fresh instructions. In this case âout of sight, handy, but not out of mindâ.
Viruses
This one bedevils us constantly. Itâs surprising how many people donât regularly use a good virus checker.
Iâve been in the situation where I got into a peculiar loop with a correspondent, who assured me he regularly scanned his system for viruses, and that the problems he was having must have emanated from me. I knew I was updating my Norton Antivirus every week. What we eventually discovered was that he was going Start, Programmes, Accessories, System Tools, Scandisk â in the mistaken belief that this was a virus scanner. Itâs only a tool to clean up the available space on your hard drive, and nothing to do with viruses.
There are a number of good programmes out there â Norton and Vet are two of the most well-known, and there are a number of other good ones. Update every week â if youâre with a good system theyâll send you automatic reminders to update the latest list of viruses. Also, you can set your machine to update automatically (you do need to be online to run an update, of course). As soon as youâve updated, run a full virus check on your C drive â it can run in the background while youâre doing other work.
The best way to avoid viruses â set your preferences
Do you know you can set the preferences in your Incoming Mail so that all new mail goes through your virus checker before landing in your Inbox? If you donât know how, call your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to be talked through the right setup. I have found this invaluable in preventing viruses â youâre warned by your system, and most systems immediately offer to either clean, quarantine, or delete the offending item.
The biggest offenders in the virus stakes are unusual attachments such as .exe files, but donât be lulled into a sense of false security â they can also come with regular attachments created in programmes like Word. Warn anyone using computers to be very cautious about attachments. Children especially, but some adults too, canât resist the urge to âpeekâ, which is of course what a virus creator is banking on. Instead, develop a compulsion to avoid!
If the subject line looks at all dodgy, delete the whole thing â itâs probably a worm or a virus. Use your commonsense. Think, âWould this person send me a mail with a subject line like this?â There have been a spate of viruses where a seemingly innocuous line such as âThe report you asked forâ, or âGetting back to youâ tries to seduce us in the subject line.
Hoaxes and Chain Letters
I mentioned hoaxes in Pt 3 of this series, but didnât really touch on chain letters. Most of them are scams, trying to hook you in to wasting time. Just delete â no matter how heart-rending or wonderful they seem to be.
Notification of Receipt
Occasionally you might receive a mail which, when you open it, says that the sender has asked to be notified of your receipt. Use this with great caution â and only if itâs a very important document you really need to know about. If used with gay abandon it just compounds the amount of mail, and becomes very frustrating to the recipients.
