Sydney: With so less time to manage the pile of emails stuffed in one`s account, it is but obvious for the `reply all` email blunder to happen leading to disastrous consequences, and people must be really alert while hitting the send button.
`Reply all` disasters are common in the business world where dozens of emails are sent and received each day and depending on the content of the email, could possibly bring a hasty firing or a forced resignation.
Business etiquette expert Anna Musson from The Good Manners Company said that a quick email explaining the error is always required whenever such blunders happen, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Musson cautioned against excessive apologizing as it makes the entire affair seem like a bigger gaffe than it really is and if the email sent is offensive in anyway, it is always best to see the aggrieved person face-to-face as possible and explain the situation.
Email expert Chee Wong said that copying 100 wrong or unnecessary emails equates to eight hours of lost productivity and with some easy ways, the reply all mistake can be prevented.
Wong suggests that in Outlook, users can automatically delay the delivery of the emails as per desired from one to five minutes, while Gmail users can activate the Undo Send option from the Settings menu.
He further advised that installing TuneReplyAll, a free add-on to Outlook 2010, would show a warning message when a user tries to reply to everyone while another add-on NoReplyAll disables the `reply to all` and `forward function`, but it works on the `intra` emails within a company.
Users can also remove or move the ` reply all` buttons, in Outlook 2003 and 2007, and position them far from the send button to reduce the risk.
Lastly, manual proofreading is another way to avoid such blunders, however, it is not as robust as it relies on human intervention, the report added.
