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SSW Rules/Communication/Rules to Better Email/Do you CC everyone and reply to all when necessary?

Rule #25

Do you CC everyone and reply to all when necessary?

v7.0 Posted at 20/10/2010 7:55 PM by system

When emailing external parties, it is a good idea to CC the other colleagues within your organization that may have an interest in the email. Some of the benefits of CC'ing others include:

It can save time
Gives the email more credibility if you have CC'd others in your organization
Colleagues may correct your mistakes

In addition, I often see people replying only to the sender of the email, ignoring the fact that there were other persons included in the original email. Obviously the original sender intended to keep everyone in the loop, so it would be polite to CC everyone included on the original communication. The converse is true also - don't cc people unnecessarily - you're just adding to the email problem!

Outlook Reply to All

Figure: Good Example - Reply All so that everyone is kept in the loop.

If the original email was to an alias with many subscribers, in general you should not Reply All.
Also if the sender requests a 'little r' reply, then you should not Reply All.

Exception

If not all recipients need to be informed
The opinions of the rest of the recipients do not matter as they are unlikely to disagree We have a program called SSW LookOut! for Outlook to check for this rule.
It checks this for you, and would raise a warning like this one:

Figure: SSW Lookout checks that you have Replied All each time you send an email