An Explanation of How To Use the Email Groups at OurLDSFamily.com Our email groups have no intrusive advertisements, unlike YahooGroups! GoogleGroups or even Facebook. We also don't have pop-ups, junk mail, or spam (as much as possible). We chose quite a while ago not to have a forum. Why? Because email groups are more private. We can better control who joins and who sends email to the groups. What we provide is not as intrusive on your time because you only have to see what you want and can delete the rest, or filter what comes as you do other email. Group members share information with each other, and we all help answer questions or give information and help. We don't post any member lists on our website or anywhere else which prevents spammers from harvesting email addresses. Posting them would also be inappropriate for privacy reasons. Unlike social media sites email groups give you the opportunity to come back to your email and read whenever you want and not miss any entries for a topic. With social media, the entries scroll down the page, never to be seen again.

One group member sent us the following outline. She asked us to edit and post it for others to use. She wished to be an anonymous contributor. Welcome to the world of e-mail groups! If you are unfamiliar with e-mail groups and how they work, here's a few words of explanation. For some this will be pretty basic, but if you're new to e-mail groups, read on. This help page should help you avoid sending e-mail duplicates and show you how to be sure your e-mails go to the right place. Depending on your email software, you may find that clicking on REPLY when responding to e-mails from the group causes the email not to go where you think it's going. Sometimes it will only return to the list owner of server. Sometimes it will go to the group, or just the person who sent it. This also depends on how they sent the email. Even though it's against the rules to send to multiple groups, many do anyway which is one reason for this 'howto'. Sending Email in four steps: Decide who you want the e-mail to go to by choosing from the following options Select an e-mail address from your address book or type one in. If your e-mail has an address book feature, you can put the group name or individual names in your address book then choose the correct group or individual name (or names) by clicking on the appropriate address while your cursor is on the TO: field. Send to the group: Copy and paste the group name (or email address). They vary depending on the group you are in. They are always something@ourldsfamily.com. To do this, hold down the mouse button and highlight the address, then right-click on it and select Copy. Then place the cursor in the TO: box by clicking there, then right-click and click on Paste (also found under edit.) Send to an individual: If you want to reply privately instead of to the whole group, copy and paste (see above explanation) the name of the individual (the e-mail address line after the words in behalf of " " or From: ) into the TO: field. Enter a Subject (by cutting and pasting from the original - or add your own appropriate subject) If this is a new, blank email, type and spell check your message. If this is a reply, highlight and delete anything you are not responding to. Because group members come and go, doing this will help others catch up on a subject without having to wade through all the clutter than can accumulate if we don't remove parts of the previous emails. Click on send. Read everything on this page, especially the notes at the end of this page, as many times as it takes. Well, hopefully this is enlightening and gives you an idea of how to use the groups to your satisfaction. As with everything, we don't expect everyone to be 100% satisfied. That's the nature of things in this life, isn't it? Thanks, Karl L. Pearson, System Administrator & owner of the sites at OurLDSFamily.com P.S. I got this from another MM (names have been de-personalized to protect privacy). It is a very important addition: More pointers on how to send private (or group) emails: From Rae Lee S.: "Betty mentioned a way to get a person's email address who has posted a message by clicking on forward. Some email programs don't work with the forwarding technique previously mentioned. The following will work with both Gmail and Thunderbird (and with many other email programs) when you want to reply to just one or two people instead of the whole list: "Bring up the message. Copy the email address of the "From" person by highlighting it, then using the keyboard, "Ctrl & C". Then, begin a blank new email just as you would to write someone and paste the address you just copied into the "To" box by clicking on "Ctrl & V". If you hit reply, which is what most people do, you reply to the whole group instead of one person." If you are in a group that has emails only going to the individual and not to the group, here is some advice on how to send to the group from Wendy B.: "One thing that just occurred to me:- do you have many groups which are structured like our Japan one to cut down on the number of emails received by individuals? (The Japan group is set up so that email responses go automatically to the individual). You may want to send a separate email to any such groups explaining that they need to follow the instructions in reverse. For these groups, contrary to the explanation just given, hitting reply will only send the email to the original writer (ie a private email). To send to the group one would need to change the "To:" address to the group address after hitting either 'Reply' or 'Forward'." [A section was deleted here with an MM's offer to help anyone who doesn't understand these instructions. I've removed her post because it would only apply to one group, and now, not to that group either because she's long gone.] From Karl: "Make sure that person's email address is in your TO field before clicking on 'Send'. If the address to the email group is in your TO field, please remove any salutation to an individual group member. When you write letters, you do that and it should be there because snail mail letters only go to one address and usually only one person at that address. "Many members of the group assume that because a name is at the top of the email, it's a personal email. This might be true, however because the sender sent the email to the group, the name shouldn't be there at all. That's the way email groups are supposed to operate. "Think of an email group like a big apartment building and when you address your email to the group address, everyone in the building is going to get it. If you just want one person in the building to get your email, you have to be sure to put just their name and address on it. If that's clear as mud, 'ask and you shall receive'." Now that you understand sending email to our groups, PLEASE READ the policy page which will tell you what should be IN your emails. It has some additional general information about email which everyone should know and which will be expected knowledge and understanding. A few important notes which will save you wondering, "What happened to my email?" are these: Don't send attachments, including pretty backgrounds and fonts. Our email group server software just blocks those by default. Don't send emails to large numbers of recipients. Our email group server software dumps those into the trash bin, too. Please don't use your work email address. Read Policy #24 if you have questions about why. Make sure your email account never goes Over Quota. That happens when you don't remove email from your INBOX. If you want your email to actually go to the group, don't send to owner-groupname@ourldsfamily.com because including owner in the TO address will send the email just to me. If you use Gmail don't be alarmed that you don't see a copy of the emails you send. That's because Gmail figures that if you sent the email you already have a copy, so when the group sends it back to you, Gmail drops it on the floor because you don't need two copies. So don't worry, your email is going to the group, providing you subscribed with your Gmail address and aren't sending from some other email address. You'll know your email made it to the group when you get replies. If you are starting a new topic, always put a new subject in the emails rather than starting a new thread by replying to something someone else said that isn't the same subject you are beginning a thread about.

This URL, (http://www.ourldsfamily.com/emailgroups/howtoemail.shtml) was last modified: Friday, 09-Mar-2012 22:28:52 MST