Why reply all is dangerous

October 30, Miscellaneous , Personal Development. Most email problems with the BCC start when an email is written to a few people, but others are blind carbon copied. Now the people who were on the email in the TO or CC lines are alerted to the fact that they were not the only recipients.

It reduces trust. It diminishes your brand. When I receive a blind carbon copy message, I am faced with a dilemma. Am I supposed to know what was in the email if I am questioned? Am I supposed to pretend I never received it? I almost always reply to the sender with a note saying never to blind carbon copy me. Why am I writing this post? To save time. Now I can just point to the reasons without starting from scratch each time. It leaves the bcc people out of the follow-up conversation.

It sends one perception out there. Those on the BCC line never see it. They are left with a different impression. No questions for them? Reconsider including them on the email. CC to the max: reply all Avoid the reply all button as if clicking it would cause a zombie apocalypse. Alternatives to reply all Reply only to the sender — they started the message and are responsible for collating feedback and delivering it to the group Reply only to the people directly impacted by your response.

Delete names from the To: field as appropriate. Additional Content. Boosting confidence in recovery. Celebrating people with disabilities. Comforting a grieving parent. Alas, based on all the pain I see at work, in email from BNET readers, and out there on the Web in general, it's clearly not the case. Here's my take on when and how you should use Reply and Reply All to avoid causing problems in the office.

Use Reply All In general, all the time. That's crazy, right? Someone crafted the addressees in the email you are reading for a reason, and respect that.

I'm referring, of course, to typical email threads with a small group of people -- there are exceptions, and I'll get to those in a moment. But if you click reply to a mail with a bunch of addressees on it, you identify yourself as either clumsy and thoughtless or someone who doesn't respect the people on the CC line enough to include them in the conversation. Which of those would you like to be known as?