The “Reply All” feature of most email programs like Outlook is a convenience ripe for abuse. Unfortunately such abuse seems to occur about once a quarter or so where I work. Folks add an alias to their message (To or Cc) that ends up involving a multitude of folks who could care less about the message just received.
So, unfortunately (!), what many folks do in reply is Reply All, yet again.
When you Reply All to a Reply All asking not to Reply All, you defeat your purpose. Instead, be surgical and just educate the offenders. That is, be sure to remove all aliases from your reply–if you really feel the need to reply in the first place–and communicate solely with individuals on the To line of the diseased message.
Surely there is a way in Outlook to establish a rule as follows:
Apply this rule after the message arrives
with INOCULATION_KEYWORD(S)_HERE in the subject
reply using INOCULATION_EMAIL_TEMPLATE_HERE
and move it to the Deleted Items folder
If you really feel compelled to Reply All, then at least do others the favor of changing the Reply-To address in your message to something less hideous (e.g. (in Outlook) Options | Direct Replies To | Have replies sent to: no-reply@…).
-Craighttp://craigrandall.net/
@craigsmusings
Seems there should be functionality in Exchange that prevents this as well.
It could provide security on lists (only certain people are allowed to send to lists over a certain size).
It could also provide a double-checking mechanism (when it receives an e-mail from an Outlook client with > X recipients in the system, it could e-mail the client back saying “This message will go to 10,000 recipients. Seriously?”).
As for anyone who replies-to-all saying “Don’t reply-to-all,” they deserve an instant punishment of some sort for their utter hypocrisy!
My favourite story on this topic…
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/31/nielsen-deletes-reply-to-all-button/