I’m on more than a couple of email lists. There’s one for my high school friends, one for my department at work, one for my Fantasy basketball league, and several more as well. Between these lists, the volume of email crossing my inbox is pretty enormous.

Most of those emails come from people pressing “Reply All.” Alternative to simply replying to the author of the original email, “Reply All” does just that- it replies to both the author of the email and the recipients of that first email.

The use for this is obvious: it’s there to create conversation that everyone can see, and to include everyone in the email without having to manually input all the email addresses. The irritation of this, too, is incredibly obvious.

I get more emails than I’d care to count that say things like “Sounds great, thanks!” or “Okay.” I get more than one email, per day, that says “K.” I kid you not.

In an effort to reduce my inbox clutter, and hopefully yours, here are five times to avoid pressing that “Reply All” button (or just avoid sending an email at all). There are, of course, exceptions to these, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.

1. Answering an Irrelevant Question

By “irrelevant,” I here mean answers that aren’t of interest to every single person in the group. I’m on one email list where someone emailed the group and asked a simple question for his research. The answer to that should have gone to him, not to everyone. If he got five replies, so be it- better five replies to him than five to all of us. If an answer is useful and relevant to everyone, however, by all means reply to everyone.

2. “Great job!”

Though kudos, thanks, or questions are always a good email to send, only send it to the relevant person. Make sure it doesn’t go back to everyone – I don’t need to know that you’re happy for them.

3. Changing the Topic

If you get an email from someone you’ve been meaning to talk to, but not about the thing you’ve been meaning to talk to them about. Don’t reply all. In fact, start a new email, with a new subject, and everyone will be happier. The only time to reply all is when you’re replying about the topic, and in a manner relevant to everyone.

4. Unsubscribing

Nothing to this- If you want off a list, do NOT send the request to the whole list.

5. Auto-Responses

This is a simple thing, but I’m always amazed by the number of people who manage to set their Vacation Responder – the email that replies to others saying “Sorry, out of town!” – to Reply to everyone. Make sure that you set your Responder to only reply to the sender of the email, and not to everyone.

If you’re getting all kinds of unnecessary “Reply All” emails, send them this email back:

Hi there, beloved friend of this email recipient:

Please visit http://thanksno.com/

Because this person likes getting personal messages from you, but doesn’t want any more email like this, please.

Love,
ThanksNo.com

That will send them to this website, where they’ll hopefully get the picture.

“Reply All” is a button that should be used sparingly, if at all. With these tips, you’ll be both getting and sending less unnecessary email.

What’s your email pet peeve, or etiquette tip?