Reply all

[vanillacourage]

At my first job one of the execs sent out an email analyzing how much productivity was lost with reply-all emails. Someone replied-all with "this is good for us to think about, thank you for sharing".

[Deleted]

We have a ton of those. Most of the people who work at my firm are in earlier time zones, so I wake up many mornings to emails like "Can anyone recommend an oil and gas lawyer in Baghdad?" to which there will be like 5 reply-alls (some of which are inevitably along the lines of "I don't, but you should ask [ ]" (who was on the original mailing list)). These emails go to over 1000 people.

There were some pretty infamous reply-all incidents at my old firm.

[mrssandro]

Happens all the time here at my work. I try to lead by example and not reply all.

[luvmagoldn]

Sept 19, 2012 9:49:12 GMT -5 vanillacourage said:

At my first job one of the execs sent out an email analyzing how much productivity was lost with reply-all emails. Someone replied-all with "this is good for us to think about, thank you for sharing".

:-(

[ladygrey]

Ugh, I hate reply all emails. Well, basically any emails that involve more than 3 people. They just turn into one big clusterfuck in my inbox.

I wish there was a policy about this (and printing emails, but that's a whole different ball of wax), but I don't see it being effective.

[froggy76]

I work for a huge company and someone accidentally sent a meeting invite to the whole company a few months ago. For the entire day, everyone's inboxes were flooded with people responding, "I don't think I should have been included in this" or something similar. Then, a bunch of people started replying-all to tell everyone not to reply-all. It was hilarious.

[greekypie]

Sept 19, 2012 9:49:12 GMT -5 vanillacourage said:

At my first job one of the execs sent out an email analyzing how much productivity was lost with reply-all emails. Someone replied-all with "this is good for us to think about, thank you for sharing".

This would so happen where I work. Lol.

[mfluder]

Older partners reply all.

I live in fear of the accidental reply all. Can I just turn that off on my computer?

[mfluder]

Sept 19, 2012 9:49:12 GMT -5 vanillacourage said:

At my first job one of the execs sent out an email analyzing how much productivity was lost with reply-all emails. Someone replied-all with "this is good for us to think about, thank you for sharing".

This is awesome.

[Chirp]

Sept 19, 2012 9:55:28 GMT -5 mfluder said:

Older partners reply all.

I live in fear of the accidental reply all. Can I just turn that off on my computer?

You can if you use Outlook. I removed the button from my work email. I'm not accidentally hitting that button. I can manually apply it if I ever need to use it.

Here's the instructions for Outlook, just in case anyone wants to get rid of the button.

Right click on the tool bar, you'll see a short menu... click on "customize" at the bottom of that list, grab the "Reply-All" button from the tool bar and drag it downward to remove it from the toolbar.

If you would ever need to reply all once the button is gone you can manually apply reply-all: right click on the email you want to reply-all to, and select "Reply to All" from the list. Done.

[Chirp]

Oh, and this has been done many times at my office. The best one was...

An email was sent out from HR to everyone in the company, explaining that a vehicle was seen circling the parking lot very slowly and the driver had tried to stop some women who were walking on their lunch hour.

Some idiot decided to reply-all with the SING self-defense maneuver that Gracie Lou Freebush used for her talent at the end of Miss Congeniality. Complete with pasted images from the movie.

HR (accidentally?) did the reply-all when they told him to please report to their office, that their manager and the director of HR was waiting to speak with them.

[Deleted]

Sept 19, 2012 9:52:43 GMT -5 froggy76 said:

I work for a huge company and someone accidentally sent a meeting invite to the whole company a few months ago. For the entire day, everyone's inboxes were flooded with people responding, "I don't think I should have been included in this" or something similar. Then, a bunch of people started replying-all to tell everyone not to reply-all. It was hilarious.

We've had it happen as well. It makes for an awesome day.

[hamster]

We're a small office so we don't really have any reply all issues.

However we do have a particular person who likes to CC the big boss as sort of a pre-emptive tattle on me. "Hamster, I notice this client's press release didn't get into the latest issue. They are recently advertising with us again, blah blah blah." Um, your client missed the deadline by a long shot, but thanks for trying to make it look like I'm not doing my job.

[mfluder]

Sept 19, 2012 10:06:11 GMT -5 Chirp said:

Sept 19, 2012 9:55:28 GMT -5 mfluder said:

Older partners reply all.

I live in fear of the accidental reply all. Can I just turn that off on my computer?

You can if you use Outlook. I removed the button from my work email. I'm not accidentally hitting that button. I can manually apply it if I ever need to use it.

Here's the instructions for Outlook, just in case anyone wants to get rid of the button.

Right click on the tool bar, you'll see a short menu... click on "customize" at the bottom of that list, grab the "Reply-All" button from the tool bar and drag it downward to remove it from the toolbar.

If you would ever need to reply all once the button is gone you can manually apply reply-all: right click on the email you want to reply-all to, and select "Reply to All" from the list. Done.

MotherF - its greyed out on my task, like I'm not allowed to mess with it. Stupid firm defaults making it harder.

[Awkward]

Sept 19, 2012 10:10:53 GMT -5 Chirp said:

Oh, and this has been done many times at my office. The best one was...

An email was sent out from HR to everyone in the company, explaining that a vehicle was seen circling the parking lot very slowly and the driver had tried to stop some women who were walking on their lunch hour.

Some idiot decided to reply-all with the SING self-defense maneuver that Gracie Lou Freebush used for her talent at the end of Miss Congeniality. Complete with pasted images from the movie.

HR (accidentally?) did the reply-all when they told him to please report to their office, that their manager and the director of HR was waiting to speak with them.

That's AWESOME, I can see that scene in my head. Super professional and appropriate.

Our email system is set up so reply all doesn't work like that. Thank jeebus.

[Deleted]

I work for a large government department. The "reply all" goes to about 700 people.

We had a reply all fight a few years ago about the uselessness of creating a calendar with photos of employee's pets. No word of a lie. That was my favorite.

[evans]

Sept 19, 2012 10:28:38 GMT -5 @jimbooo said:

Sept 19, 2012 9:46:26 GMT -5 @blessed said:

Do people in your work place have a problem with not understanding when it's appropriate to reply all?

We all already get enough email, so why do people constantly feel the need to reply all.

Most recent example: Email sent out to remind us about a brown bag lunch discussion tomorrow. Someone reply all "Thanks for the reminder, I'm looking forward to it"

Is that really necessary?

Funny thing is, as an organization we're trying to work on a better communications plan/strategy across all sites, but I don't this is part of the plan lol.

omg, we must work at the same place!!! What industry are you in?

I can 100% guarantee that you do not work in the same industry as Blessed.

This thankfully doesn't happen very often here.
However, I sometimes get put into emails on the third round of replies that will then later have a message that will allude to a email I wasn't part of, so I'm lost and never know the outcome.

[UnderProtest]

The best one I've seen is when someone replied to a meetup post. She meant to write to the meetup event organizer, but it went to everyone. It contained a ton of personal info. It was rather funny.

[Deleted]

I have learned my manager likes to be CCed on a lot more items than I think is necessary so I CC her a lot. It also means every email after the original needs her to be CCed. It's so annoying. Yesterday, I had to CC her on a thank you email because I didn't the first time and she CCed me on her TY email.

My big annoyance is having to send a reply email everytime a meeting is scheduled. They do not understand there is an event calendar that shows the people who have accepted the meeting. I think it's such a waste of time.

[evans]

Speaking of CCing: There is a department here that always CCs things to the manager on every single thing. It drives me crazy to see that from the outside.

[mccallister84]

OMG yes.

[Deleted]

Sept 19, 2012 10:32:38 GMT -5 @jimbooo said:

Sept 19, 2012 10:31:21 GMT -5 evans said:

I can 100% guarantee that you do not work in the same industry as Blessed.

Seriously? How would you know? does she happen to work in education??

LOL. Believe me, we know that you do not work in her industry. Trust.

[steph96]

I love being cc'd on 200 emails that I have no part in. All I did was forward it to our sister department that should have received it. You'd think they would know that the chick across the hall doesn't need to be cc'd. Grrrrr! I wish there was a polite way to say "hey try looking at the departments you are sending it to you dummie!"

[midwest07]

I wish more people would make use of the BCC function when sending emails to a ton of people if the email is just informational and not for discussion, then if people reply all, it only goes back to the sender and anyone cc'd.

This may not always work in work environments, but it could in many other situations. For example, I am on a nonprofit board with over 60 board members. Invariably, someone sends out a reminder for a meeting, and someone replies all "looking forward to it!" If our secretary would just BCC everyone, this wouldn't happen.