From the course: Computer Literacy for Mac (2018)

Reply vs. reply all - Mac OS Tutorial

From the course: Computer Literacy for Mac (2018)

Reply vs. reply all

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- [Narrator] This is going to be a very brief but important video on the difference and etiquette of Reply versus Reply All when responding to email messages. Every email client gives you the ability to reply to a message by clicking either Reply or Reply All. But the difference between these two options only matters when you're just one of multiple recipients of an email. If you're the only recipient of an email, you can click either Reply or Reply All with no difference. But if you've received an email that was addressed to people in addition to yourself, and you'll notice if you see other addresses in the To or CC fields, you'll want to click Reply to send your response only to the sender of the original email. So you can see when I click Reply here in mail, only the original sender's address ends up in the To field. If you need or want the rest of the recipients to receive a reply as well, then click Reply All. There's actually a Reply All button here too. You can see that adds everyone else in the CC field. And I can toggle between the two depending on what I want to do. So it's that simple. Click Reply to just the sender of the email, Reply All to reply to everyone who received the email. But knowing when to use which can sometimes be tricky. The important thing is to consider whether everyone needs to read your reply. For this example, in this email, the sender's asking if everyone is available for a meeting. It probably makes sense to click Reply All so everyone involved will know if you're available or not. Just going to close it for a moment. But look at this other email in which the sender is telling everyone he won't be in the office. If I want to send him a short get well message, I probably don't need to hit Reply All. The other people don't need to see that I've sent a personal message to the sender unless I'm trying to demonstrate what an empathetic person I am. So just ask yourself if everyone really needs to read your reply before hitting Reply All. It's easy to end up on the receiving end of endless email threads that have developed into personal conversations simply because a few people keep hitting Reply All. If you already receive tons of email every day, it can be very annoying to keep getting messages that aren't addressed to you and have nothing to do with you simply because your address was on the original relevant email. Another reason to be aware of which button you click, is that maybe you really don't want everyone else on the list to read what you're writing. There are tons of stories out there in which someone meant to reply to just the sender with personal or confidential information but clicked Reply All by accident and sent his response to the entire group. So always take a moment and be aware of whether you're clicking Reply or Reply All. You could save yourself and others aggravation or embarrassment.

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