Forwarding emails...

Most email programs have the ability to forward emails on to others. Doing so only requires your clicking on a forward button and entering the email address of the party or parties you want the email forwarded to...., but did you know that when you forward your email, the header data that was at the top of your received email is forwarded too, in fact the header data of all the previous forwards is also included. The following is an example of header data:

Subject: Just a thank you....
     Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2000 22:43:32 -0800
From: Jane Doe <jdoe@anywhere.com>
 To: " Your friend <someone@somewhere.com >

I personally have received emails that had over 15 blocks of header data which included 129 email addresses of complete strangers that I had to scroll thru before I even reached the text of the message.... Definitely not my favorite kind of email..

Instead of forwarding emails as mentioned above, I would rather take an extra minute or two and make up a new email to send..... To send only the text of a message I have received, I highlight the text in the email window and copy it to the clipboard, then paste it into the message part of a new email composition window, add the recipients address and send the email.... If the text has been previously forwarded, most lines will have an angle brackets (>) at the very beginning. These can be left in the text or removed..... URL addresses can be forwarded using this very same method.

I am sure most of you realize a single email can be sent to more than one recipient by using a "List" of email addresses.., but are you aware that unless you send your email list as a Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) every recipients address will show in the "TO:" part of the header for all to see.... Information on how to send Blind Carbon Copies can be found in the HELP file of all browsers.

What is most important is that by making the new email you have deleted all of the transfer data from past forwards and in doing so have deleted all of the email addresses of the strangers that were included in the past forwards.... I personally prefer not to send email addresses of others in my messages without the permission of the addressee..

(The above copy and paste method works great for text but sending graphics is a completely different matter..... Most browsers have their own specific way of sending graphics and require a copy of the graphic to be on the hard drive, not just in the cache file of the email program being used when making a new email... Graphics normally must be reattached from the hard drive to the new email.... I suggest that if you plan on sending graphics in your emails, you read how to do this in your browser's "HELP" file..... We do plan to have updated information regarding the sending of graphics in the in our "WebMasters thoughts" page soon)

If you have any comments about this article please send them to "btwos@earthlink.net"