Does anyone have a fix for people not using reply-all?

Question

Pretty regularly in my personal life I email people who have obviously not been trained in email etiquette. I intentionally include my spouse on emails, or they me, and then we have to forward responses to each other.I know a system like zendesk might handle this but it seems a little heavyweight for personal use.Does anyone have any suggestions for a software solution to this that doesn&rsquo;t cost an arm and a leg?

kazinator · Accepted Answer

Probably, the only technical solution not involving redesigning the recipients mail client is to make use of the Reply-To header mechanism.
The Reply-To header is usually used with one address, but in fact multiple addresses scan be specified.
When sending an e-mail to the "reply-all-averse" individual, put yourself and your wife into the Reply-To header.
When the user tries to reply to the e-mail, their mail client should stuff those addresses into the To: field, so unless they edit that, the reply should go to those addresses.
There is the risk that the user's e-mail client doesn't handle multiple addresses in Reply-To (the developers didn't know about this, or else didn't test it).
If this is just for two people, you could create a mail alias that expands to you and your wife's addresses, and use that as the Reply-To target.

mcpeepants · Answer

what about using an alias that sends to both of you as the Reply-To address?

2rsf · Answer

I was reading the question as how to fix people replying all to lists of a few dozen people like school mailing lists, sport clubs etc.

mtmail · Answer

Email yourself and put all the recipients on BCC. That's prevents reply-all, but of course wouldn't prevent somebody from forwarding an email.

zhte415 · Answer

Put a note at the top "Please respond with 'reply all' as those copied are important to this email."

brudgers · Answer

If reply-all is a problem the email is being sent to too many people. If there are etiquette concerns, the originator not reaching out individually to each person is among them. This is, after all personal life and time is not money. Blast email only occurs because the sender has optimized for their own convenience. Often at the expense of the recipient.To avoid reply all, use mail merge.

laurieg · Answer

Is it generally agreed practice to always use reply all?