Email etiquette at work

Based on a writing tip I wrote recently for my work colleagues.

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Brad asked:

Do you have any information on etiquette/guidelines/best practise for emails, specifically when not to CC people who may have been on an original email? I see a lot of emails that start off as a simple one-way communication, i.e. not necessarily expecting a conversation, where people are CC’ed (managers or supervisors usually) that then escalates into a back and forth discussion, not necessarily in a bad way, but where all original participants are retained.

Good question, Brad.

Below I’ve compiled a list of etiquette rules for internal email that I gleaned from several websites that deal with this question (see the links at the end). I haven’t ranked them in any particular order, and I haven’t expanded too much on any of them as they should be self-explanatory (if you need more detail, see the links):

• Begin with a simple greeting, and end with ‘Thanks’, ‘Regards’ or similar as well as your signature (set up an automated signature in Outlook 2007 by going to Tools > Options > Mail Format tab > Signatures button)
• Make sure the subject line reflects the contents of the email
• Be as concise as possible; use bullet points or short paragraphs, with just one idea per paragraph or bullet point
• Ask permission before forwarding another person’s email
• Reply in a timely fashion
• Send personal emails from your PERSONAL account, not the company’s
• All work email (even deleted mail) is the property of the company and is NOT private
• Don’t send chain mail, forwards, hoaxes, jokes, or other unprofessional emails to your work colleagues (see link below for urban legends and hoaxes)
• Before clicking ‘Send’, re-read your message and check the list of recipients. Check the recipients again – do they ALL need to get the email?
• Don’t ‘Reply all’ out of habit – ‘Reply’ is usually sufficient; if you do ‘Reply all’, check the list of recipients first and delete those who don’t need the information
• Delete any unwanted ‘threads’ in the email before replying  – only reply to what you’ve been asked; trim out the unnecessary bits of previous conversations
• Don’t send huge attachments – link to the document or folder on the network instead; typically, you can’t attach files to an email that are more than about 5 MB in total
• Use standard English and punctuation; use acronyms sparingly; avoid sarcasm and irony as they don’t translate well in words; avoid emoticons (smileys) and ‘text-speak’; curb your use of exclamation points
• Use standard fonts, font sizes, colours, and sentence case
• Use the CC line for those who need to get a copy of the email, but who aren’t the main recipient; use the BCC line for those whose email addresses you don’t want to disclose (don’t forget – assume that every email you send from the company account is NOT private, whether you use BCC or not); be judicious in who you add to the CC/BCC lists – not everyone has to see everything, and ‘reply all’ threads become very cumbersome
• If you and the recipient are in a long email chain trying to get your message understood, pick up the phone and call them, or meet them face to face
• Set up Inbox folders and learn how to use ‘rules’ to route emails into those folders (Tools > Rules and Alerts)

More information:

• How to write an internal email: http://www.worketiquette.co.uk/how-to-write-an-internal-email.html  (there’s some good stuff about work etiquette in general at this website: http://www.worketiquette.co.uk/)
• Email etiquette: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/email-etiquette/
• Modern Etiquette: Email etiquette at work and home: http://www.mindfood.com/at-modern-etiquette-email-etiquette-at-work-and-home.seo
• Email etiquette at work: http://ezinearticles.com/?Email-Etiquette-at-Work&id=5042388
• Email Etiquette: 26 Rules to Follow: http://email.about.com/od/emailnetiquette/tp/core_netiquette.htm
• How to Use Proper Email Etiquette at Work: http://www.ehow.com/how_2293051_use-proper-email-etiquette-work.html
• Urban legends and hoaxes (best place to find out if the email you’ve been sent about a credit card scam or similar is legitimate or is a hoax): http://www.snopes.com

[Links last checked February 2013]

Outlook: Globally change Country/Region for contacts

I have close to 900 contacts in my Outlook address book. When I was in the By Location view, I’d noticed that some address formats weren’t quite right so I started to fix the entries individually. That was fine for the early parts of the address, but I had some 650 contacts in Australia, some 160 in the US, and smaller numbers for other countries. Many of them just needed a country added, or ‘USA’ changed to United States of America (the drop-down value in the country list).

Doing it one at a time was getting painful!

So I did a quick search on the internet and after plowing through a lot of sites that weren’t relevant, I found the solution at Slipstick, a terrific resource for all things Outlook: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/contacts/keep-outlook-from-putting-the-wrong-country-in-new-addresses/

In essence, you show your contacts in the By Location view, sort by Country/Region, then right click on the Country/Region header and select Group by this field. Make sure that at least one address in each contact group has the correct country.

Then select and drag those without a country or with the wrong country onto the group that already has the country. Each one changes instantly!

I was very happy as I just saved a HEAP of time.

Thanks Slipstick!

See also:

• http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/outlook-update-address-details-for-multiple-contacts/

[Links last checked October 2012]

Outlook: Delay the delivery of an email

Did you know that you can delay the delivery of an email so that it’s sent at a time and date of your choosing? Very handy if you have an announcement you want to make at a particular time/date, or if want to sit on your response for a while (though I strongly suggest you use the Drafts folder for that type of email!)

Here’s how in Outlook 2007 and 2010:

1. Click New E-mail as you would for any new email message.
2. On the new message window, you’ll see a custom ribbon specific to that email. Click the Options tab.
   

   Go to the Options tab on a new email message window

3. Go to the More Options group, and click Delay Delivery.
   

   Click Delay Delivery in the More Options group

4. Complete the details on the Properties window, then click Close.
   

   Complete the time/date and other details

5. Click Send as usual — the message will sit in your Outbox until the time/date you specified, when it will be sent.

While this is a handy feature, there are some issues with it. For details on those, see: http://office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=1681

[Links last checked March 2012]

Microsoft Lync status sets itself to Busy

I use Microsoft Lync on my client’s computer when I’m linked in to their office via VPN. However, it’s baffled me as to why Lync often changes my status to Busy or Busy — In a meeting without my permission.

I wanted to find out why it does this and how I can stop it from doing so. I’d already gone into the Lync settings (Tools > Options) and tried to change my Status settings for the Inactive and Away statuses (the only ones you can change). However, my client has these set to 15 minutes and doesn’t let me change them. Those settings weren’t what I wanted anyway — it was the Busy status that was annoying me as it would report me as Busy/in a meeting when I wasn’t (in a meeting, that is).

Off to the internet… where I found the answer! And it’s all to do with the connection between your Outlook Calendar and Microsoft Lync.

It seems that Lync is intimately linked with Outlook/Exchange Server, and if you have an appointment scheduled in your Outlook Calendar, Lync will pick that up and change your status to Busy or Busy — in a meeting for that time. If the appointment is as a result of a meeting request, you’ll show as Busy — in a meeting; if it’s just a reminder, your status will show as Currently busy, free at <time>.

Which is all very fine if you use Outlook’s Calendar to schedule your meetings. But what about if you use the calendar for other purposes, such as a reminder tool? For example, I use Outlook’s Calendar to remind me to put in my weekly report (recurring reminder every Thursday), turn on my ‘Out of Office’ notifications (recurring reminder late every Thursday), jot down which documents are due to me on what dates (ad hoc reminders), etc. None of these are meetings — they are reminders.

Sure, I could use Outlook’s Tasks function for my reminders instead, but Tasks doesn’t offer me the very visual ‘at a glance’ view of my week or month that the Calendar function does. I can set recurring tasks and dates in Tasks, but not a time range (e.g. I don’t want to be reminded about setting my Out of Office notification until late on a Thursday, so I need the flexibility of Calendar for that).

By default, all appointments are set to 30 minutes, so there may be several 30-minute periods in my work day when my Lync status shows that I’m Busy and therefore unavailable, when I’m actually available.

I just ran a test with a colleague, and even if I dismiss the Calendar reminder, my status still shows as Busy until the time expires. The only way I can ‘kill’ it is to delete the ‘appointment’ (it takes a minute or two for your status to change back after deleting the appointment) or to manually change my status to Available.

I think it’s clever how Lync syncs with your Outlook Calendar, but I also think it’s a bit too clever. I won’t IM or call someone whose Lync status is Busy. But now that I know they *may* be available despite the displayed status, I might try IM’ing them and not holding off until their status changes.

Update January 2012: Peter C, a work colleague, told me how to set your reminders in Outlook so that Lync doesn’t report you as Busy. Unfortunately, you seem to have to set this one reminder at a time — I couldn’t see any Outlook settings where I could change the default for this. Here’s Peter’s solution:

When you set any appointment, Outlook automatically sets your status for that appointment as Busy — this is what Lync picks up and displays.

However, you can change your status for any appointment to Free and Lync will show you as Available.

See also:

• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/communicator-help/change-your-presence-status-HA101850359.aspx

[Links last checked January 2012; thanks to Peter C for providing a solution]

Outlook won’t open

I had a bit of a scare the other day when Outlook on my client’s laptop wouldn’t open. I got this message:

Outlook cannot open your default e-mail folders. The information store could not be opened.

It was possibly related to me trying to open Outlook the previous evening when I wasn’t connected to the client’s servers via VPN.

I went hunting on the internet for a solution — and found a few.

But before trying to apply any of those solutions or calling the client’s IT support center, I decided to reboot the computer in case something got tangled up between me disconnecting from the VPN, opening Outlook offline, reconnecting to the VPN the next morning and trying to open Outlook as normal — which is when I got the error.

And the restart worked!

In case you get a similar message and a restart doesn’t work, here are some sites that may help:

• http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/outlookdoesntstart.htm
• http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/officeversion_other-outlook/cannot-open-your-default-e-mail-folders-the/d75dab7b-8e64-41d5-8d32-aff2c031555c

[Links last checked 1 December 2011]

Outlook: Reusable text snippets

(I have adapted this post from an article in Words, available from: http://www.abelard.com.au/words-3-3.pdf)

You’re probably aware that you can set up several signatures in Outlook, and set one as the default. At any time, you can choose another signature  and use that instead of your default by inserting it from Insert > Signature (Outlook 2003 and later).

But did you know that you can also set up *any* text, save it, then insert it into any email? This is very handy for paragraphs you use often. Some uses I thought of straight away included: directions and map links to your home or business address, electronic banking details for people who need to pay you, multiple contact details such as Skype, Twitter, Facebook, etc., as well as ‘boilerplate’ text that you might use in response to a sales/service inquiry. The possibilities are endless…

There are two sets of steps:

1. Create a snippet.
2. Insert the snippet into an email.

Step 1: Create the snippet

1. Open Outlook.
2. Click New to start a new email message.
3. In the subject line, enter something that describes this snippet (e.g. ‘directions to house’, ‘electronic banking details’, etc.)
4. In the message body, write the text.
5. Save the email. By default, your email message is saved in your Drafts folder — once saved, you can move it to any other folder (e.g. if you have a lot of snippets or a lot of other drafts, you might want to create a special Snippets folder).

Step 2: Insert the snippet into an email

You’re part way through writing your email and you want to add a saved text snippet:

1. Find the snippet:
   • Word 2003: On the Insert menu, select Item.
   • Word 2007: On the Insert tab, select Attach Item.
   • Word 2010: On the Insert tab, select Outlook Item.
2. On the top panel of the Insert Item window, select the folder where you store your snippets (Drafts is the default folder for saved email messages).
3. In the lower panel, select the name of the snippet.
4. Select the Text only option under Insert as, then click OK.
   

   Outlook's Insert Item window

5. The subject line and the message are inserted into your current email — you just need to delete the subject line.
6. Once in your current email, you can alter the text snippet — the original won’t change.

[Links last checked August 2011]

Outlook: Create an email template

For every document I edit for my main client, I send out a ‘QA complete’ email to the person who sent the document to me (that person might not be the author). In every one of these ‘QA complete’ emails is some standard wording, which I’ve saved on the network as a *.msg file. When I need to create another one, I open that one, copy the text and paste it into the new email then add specific text related to the document I’ve just edited for them.

While the standard wording saves time, the method I’ve been using to store it just adds to the time. So it was time for me to find out how to create an email template in Outlook, and how to use it for a new email. And it’s all very simple — I should’ve done it years ago!

These instructions are for Outlook 2007 and 2010, but they should work similarly for Outlook 2003 (though the menu paths etc. will be different).

Create the email template

1. Create a new email message.
2. Complete as much of the message wording as you want in the template (including your signature), and add a subject line  — you’ll be able to change anything in these areas later. You don’t need to complete the recipient fields, unless the email will always go to the same people.
3. Depending on your Outlook version:
   • Outlook 2007: Click the Office button (top left of the message window), then select Save As
   • Outlook 2010: File > Save As.
4. Give the template a File name (if you added a subject, the subject will default as the file name)
5. Change the Save as type to Outlook Template (*.oft). The template automatically saves to your Microsoft Templates folder.
6. Click Save.
7. When you close the email template, you may be asked if you want to save changes. Click No if you haven’t made any changes since saving a few moments ago.

Create a new email based on the template

1. DO NOT click the New button. Instead, depending on your Outlook version:
   • Outlook 2007: Click File > New (or the drop-down arrow next to the New button) > Choose Form.
   • Outlook 2010: Home > New items > More items > Choose Form.
2. On the Choose Form window, click the drop-down arrow next to the Look in field.
3. Select User Templates in File System to display your templates.
   
4. Select the template you want to use, then click Open. A new email message opens, containing all the information you added earlier. This message is now disconnected from the template so you can make any changes you want before sending it to the recipients.

If you want to make changes to the wording in an email template, create a new email based on it, then Save As a template file (*.oft) under the same file name.

Outlook Web Access: Tips for use

When I’m on the road, I use Outlook Web Access (OWA) or Outlook Web Access Lite to access email, contacts, calendars, etc. stored on my Exchange Server. And so it was for my recent trip to the US.

However, I kept getting logged out of OWA after about 10 minutes of inactivity. While this is good if you’re on a public computer in an airport or similar, it’s not so good when you’re in a hotel room on your own computer.

I asked the PC Guru guys if they knew why I was getting logged out and if there was something they could set on my Exchange Server to extend the time I was logged in. Well, they didn’t have to do anything after my Guru gave me some advice!

So I’ll share his advice with you — hopefully, it will help others who use OWA on the road:

• Use Internet Explorer for OWA, even if you use another browser for all other web activity. Both IE and OWA are Microsoft products, so they play well together.
• When on a public computer, select the Public option. This will automatically log you out after about 10 minutes of inactivity.
• When on your own computer, even in a public location like an airport lounge, select the Private option. You won’t get logged out automatically.

[Link last checked March 2011]

How many is too many?

I got this message when I tried to mark an email as ‘not junk’ in Outlook Web Access:

So — how many is too many? When I check the Safe Senders list, there’s a note there that says that all my contacts are automatically included. I have just a tad under 1000 contacts, plus whatever I’ve added to the Safe Senders list over the years.

Why is there a limit? I’m a one-person business and I have close to 1000 contacts. How do much larger businesses deal with this? Surely Outlook was designed for business use, so why is there a limit and what is it?

I tried copying the Safe Senders list and pasting it into Excel, but it won’t copy. And at approx 6 entries per scroll, I’m not going to try to count them!

Update: Looks like the default is around 2000, according to this article: http://www.slipstick.com/rules/safesenders.htm. It can be adjusted in Exchange Server by modifying the Registry.

Outlook 2007: Display an HTML file in an email message

Scenario

A colleague wanted to know how to insert an HTML file into an Outlook 2007 email so that everything in the file was displayed in the body of the email. They did not want to send the HTML file as an attachment. The HTML file already existed and it was a basic form with a Submit button that linked to a person’s email address.

This is not my area of expertise, but I said I’d find out. I knew you could do something similar in earlier versions of Outlook. I also suspected they may have to use Word to create the HTML file, but I wasn’t really sure.

Off to the internet…

Possible solutions

I did a little digging and it seems that Microsoft changed things in Outlook 2007 regarding sending HTML emails (the first section of this article explains it: http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/iland/2007/01/outlook-2007-and-html-email-design.html)

There is a workaround (also from that article), but it DOESN’T work with forms, and that’s what this team wanted to do – put an HTML form into an email. I tried the workaround method and while it put in the text correctly, it broke all the form fields and the submit buttons. Here’s that method:

1. Open the HTML file in Internet Explorer.
2. In Internet Explorer, turn on the menu bar if it’s not already displayed (Tools > Menu bar)
3. Go to File > Send > Page by Email.
4. A new Outlook email message will open with the HTML file embedded in it.

So while this may work for an ordinary HTML file, it wasn’t a solution for a file with a form in it.

I also suggested these alternatives to my colleague:

• Put the HTML file up somewhere on the corporate intranet and send users the URL (this would also work for the general internet too)
• If the form is also for those outside the corporate intranet, consider using something quick, cheap (free), and super easy to use like http://www.surveymonkey.com/. You can keep the survey private and just send out the URL to those who need to complete it.
• If it’s a simple Q&A form, with set choices for answers, then Outlook has a polling option that may be of use: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/create-polls-in-e-mail-messages-and-review-the-results-HP010080425.aspx

[Links last checked January 2011]