When it comes to e-mail etiquette, I'm quite particular. I tend to roll my eyes and think less of people who don't know the difference between "Reply" and "Reply All", I'm not all that forgiving with typos, and think that the way e-mails are written should be in line with your own capability for writing or communicating. So when I goof up, I'm particularly annoyed. Today, I most certainly goofed.Late last September, I had tried to send a message at the office via the Microsoft Entourage desktop client, as Webmail was having issues. For some reason, that didn't go through either. After a few hours of struggles, I ended up sending the note from my personal e-mail account, using Apple Mail, and hadn't opened up Entourage since. Until today.
Prompted to revisit Microsoft's sorry excuse cousin to Outlook for the Mac, I fired up Entourage and set it up to synchronize, so each folder would be updated. As the app sluggishly whirred to life, filling my inbox with the latest, a familiar "Sending Mail" sound echoed. Oops. Seconds later, my message from September hit an internal distribution list and I was made to look like a fool, as the note gave a snapshot in time from 10 months prior. In the age of instant receipt and Blackberries, there was no good reason to recall. Instead, I just sighed and apologized to all for the error.
I hate that. The next step is to just make sure I never open Entourage again.
Update: Ars Technica in parallel has posted a note on curing "sender's remorse"...
I think what's even worse are the messages meant for one but sent to all. Ugh, if I had a nickel for every Reply to All after that...
ReplyDeleteFYI, Entourage uses the same connection method as Outlook Web Access (OWA). If your webmail isn't working then that's probably why Entourage wasn't working either. Server-side problem.
You're obviously not a fan of Entourage (or Microsoft?) but I would be curious to know how you think Entourage could be improved to avoid this in the future. (Outlook could also be susceptible to the same problem.)