5 ‘Good Manners’ Tips for Computer Users

• Use a Signature
• Reduce the Size of Attachments
• Send Safe & Secure Documents
• Don’t Share Other’s Email Addresses
• Let the Receiver Know What Your Email is About

Use a Signature

Including a relevant signature at the end of emails you send, is helpful to the receiver. Your signature can include your phone numbers, ‘skype’ address, home address, inspirational message and even your picture or logo.

You can set up signatures for different purposes. For example, a ‘personal signature’ for family and friends, a ‘business signature’ for work associates, even a signature that includes a standard reply to job applicants, for example. To do this in Microsoft Outlook, select Tools > Options >Mail Format > Signatures. Simply type in what it is you would like appear as your signature.

You can set up multiple signatures with individual names. You can even set up signatures to be associated with different email addresses. When sending your emails, the default signature will appear when you start a new email. To change the default signature if you are using Outlook 2007, simply select ‘Signatures’ from the top ribbon, and choose the signature you want to use.

Reduce the Size of Attachments

Including very large attachments with emails, can cause problems for the receiver. If the receiver has a slow or costly internet connection you may cause them annoyance or additional costs. To avoid this use Winrar to ‘package’ your large files or groups of photos etc. for emailing. Simply select the files you want to email and right click for the dropdown menu and select ‘Compress and Email’.

When your receiver receives them, and once they have Winrar, they simply click on the Winrar Package to open it. There is no loss of quality of the items you send when you use this simple method. Go to www.win-rar.com to download this very useful file packaging software.

Send Safe & Secure Documents

Don’t send documents as unprotected Word documents as the receiver could change the document contents. The wise way to send documents is as a PDF (Portable Document Format). To do this you need a piece of software to create a PDF. The website www.primopdf.com has a handy and free PDF creator.

A PDF creator will create a 'virtual printer' on your computer. In other words an extra PDF printer will appear in your list of available printers. If you print to this printer then rather than being printed out onto paper, a PDF file will be created. You can then attach this PDF to the email you are sending.

Don’t Share Other’s Email Addresses

Don’t send an email to your family, friends or business associates and include the list of their email addresses in the (Carbon Copy) field of the email. This means that everyone can see everyone else’s email addresses. To respect your receivers’ privacy, simply paste the list into the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy).

To make the BCC field available to you simply start a new email, and in the Options Tab at the top, select ‘show BCC’. When I send an email to a group I put my address in the ‘To’ field, and I put everyone else’s addresses in the ‘BCC’ field. Believe it or not I have received emails from government bodies and large companies with hundreds of email addresses in the ‘CC’ field. This carelessness contributes to SPAM and other security breaches on the internet.

Let the Receiver Know What Your Email is About

Save your own and your receivers’ time by ensuring the subject line SUMS UP what the email is about. To do this write your email, read it and decide what one line sentence will summarise the content. Put that sentence in the subject line.

When your receiver sees your email in their Inbox it should be clear to them what the email is about without opening it. This means you are more likely to get the desired response. Also this will save time for yourself as when you look in your ‘Sent’ box you will quickly identify what the email you sent was about without having to open it.

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