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September 15, 2002
Streamlining and Enhancing E-mail
By Jeffrey Branzburg
This page is designed specifically with the new-to-technology educator in mind. Please feel free to reproduce it for use in your teacher training sessions or other staff development efforts.
Although the basics of e-mail involve simply sending, receiving, and reading messages, the "e-mail experience" can be streamlined and enhanced through the use of features common to most programs.
Using Folders
Just as we create folders on our computers to help organize and categorize files, we can create folders within many e-mail programs to do the same with our e-mails. For example, a teacher may put all e-mails from the principal into one folder and all e-mails from a professional e-mail group into another. That way it becomes easier to later find that e-mail from the principal regarding assessment, or the one from the professional group discussing math techniques.
Sorting Your Mail Within a Folder
Even after you put your e-mail into various folders, you may find that the number of messages within any one folder can grow fairly large. In that case you can then sort the mail within the folder any number of ways. The default sort is usually by date, with the list of e-mails appearing chronologically. However, try clicking on the "From" column. The messages will then be grouped by the sender's name-perfect for finding a message from a specific person regardless of when it was sent. Alternatively, try clicking on the "Subject" column if you know what the message was entitled, but not who sent it or when it was sent.
Adding a Signature to Your E-mail
Each time you send a professional e-mail, especially if it is to people who may not know you (say, a posting on a forum), you may want to sign it with your name, title, school district, and other information. Most e-mail programs have a feature that allows you to enter this information once and then have it automatically appended to the end of any e-mail you compose. Some e-mail programs give you the option of creating a number of these signatures from which you can choose each time you create an e-mail.
E-mail Stationery
To further personalize your outgoing e-mails try creating e-mail stationery. Many e-mail programs have a feature that allows you to create a template so that all outgoing e-mail messages use the font, size, color, and style of your choosing. Some let you automatically include a graphic image, such as your school district logo, in your e-mails. Keep in mind, though, that only recipients who can receive HTML e-mail will be able to view your enhanced messages. Some people prefer to just receive plain text, without the graphics and fonts that make the e-mail more like a Web page.
Reply, Reply All, Forward
When you receive an e-mail message, there are many ways to respond. If you want to reply only to the sender, use "Reply." If you want to reply to the sender along with all other people who received the same message (those listed in the "cc" field), use "Reply All." If you want to send the message along to another person, but do not want to reply to the author, use the "Forward" option.
Automatically Add E-mail Addresses to Your Address Book
Adding names and e-mail addresses to your e-mail address book can be a time-consuming task if you need to type each one individually. Luckily, most e-mail programs have features that make it easy to add e-mail addresses of people from whom you have received e-mail. In some programs you can right-click (PC) or click and hold (Mac) on the sender's e-mail address to automatically add the sender to your address book. Some programs even offer automatic addition of all senders to the address book, without you needing to do anything. Note, however, that this automatic addition feature may have the unintended consequence of adding addresses of spammers (senders of unwanted e-mails) to your address book.
Address Auto-completion
Rather than accessing your e-mail address book to select recipients, you can frequently just start typing their names or e-mail addresses in the "To" field. By the time you have typed the third or fourth letter the program will automatically locate and complete the listing-as long as the person is already in your address book.
Create E-mail Groups
We frequently need to send an e-mail to a group of people, say all third-grade teachers or all principals. Most e-mail programs allow you to create a group name (such as "3rd grade" or "principals") and enter the e-mail addresses of the group members once. Then, any e-mail addressed to the group name will automatically go to all members of the group.
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