5 email tips to make your life easier!

5 email tips to make your life easier!
Article by Bob Young








E-mailing is the most popular and efficient way to contact people. However, e-mailing has it's drawbacks. Here are some problem areas and how to overcome them:1. SPAM: No matter how much patience you have, spam is a menace! This is email you never wanted and people are just blasting you with products or enticements. You try to ignore it but it keeps growing and growing till it starts eating up more and more of your time. You reach a point where you are so mad, you feel like throwing the computer at these inconsiderate people who are clogging your inbox and wasting your valuable time.
Relax, there is a solution! Just have ALL your email come to a spam folder and then set a rule in Outlook (or email processing software of your choice) to only put emails from known people into your inbox. Once a week, just eye through the spam folder quickly to see if there is any email you may have missed. If not, then delete the entire folder and you are done!
2. Bounced email: You are working hard to catch up and trying to get an important message out. So you email the person and you think you are done. Two minutes later the message comes back as 'undeliverable'. It always happens when you least expect it and are pressed for time. It is so frustrating!
I found a place where you can FORWARD your undeliverable email (also known as 'bounced' email) to Find@switchemail.com and they will find the new email address and forward the message.
3. Attachments: If you want to stay away from the dreaded viruses, worms and all those wonderful pesky things that hurt your computer, then don't open any attachments from unknown people. Also, ask all your contacts to send you the attachment in the body of the email. Rarely, will you have a need where you have to have a separate attachment. Simply, have them cut & paste the attachment content into the email body. This way you are COMPLETELY safe and yet have the information.
4. Subject line: A great way to communicate is to type your message in the subject line. Of course this works best with short messages. You may be able to convert your other email also in to short messages. Think about it, most of the people that we regularly email, generally all we need is to get a short message across. Maybe an acknowledgement or a quick question. Why waste time with salutation, body, signature. Subject line messaging works great. You have less work to do, and they don't have to open the email and read through the clutter to find the message. This method of subject line messaging saves a lot of time for everyone, try it!
5. Original message: Always include original message in your reply. It helps you by having a chronological documentation of how things happened. It helps them by remembering what was said before. In our hectic day to day life, we all forget what we were discussing via email. You then have to scroll through previous emails to recreate what was said. I get frustrated when people have their email settings where they don't send me the original message. The whole process can be cut short, if you only set up your settings to include original message in the reply. Make your life and the other person's life easier!