How To: Avoid Auto-Complete Mixups When Sending E-Mail
Most e-mail clients and even many web-based e-mail services offer an auto-complete feature when addressing a new message. Most of the time this a great help and saves you from having to remember hundreds of e-mail addresses.
But there’s a downside some of us have been bitten by before; if you’re not careful you can end up sending mail to the wrong recipient. For instance, if your boss’ name is William and your friend’s name is also William, you need to be careful about which one is selected when you use auto-complete addressing, otherwise you’re liable to have some embarrassing gaffes.
Rob Griffith over at Macworld has an interesting solution — create address book groups that consist of only one person.
For instance, Rob uses a group called “da boss” to hold his boss’s address, so to pull up that address he types “da b” and Apple’s Mail app then auto-complete the field with all of the addresses in that group — in this case just his boss. Hit return and he’s got the right person every time.
While this tip may seem overly simple, it can be a real lifesaver. And it isn’t limited to just Apple’s Mail app, but should work with any e-mail app/service that allows for creating address book groups — I set up a similar shortcuts in both Yahoo Mail and GMail. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work in Thunderbird.
And keep in mind that this isn’t the only possible use case for address book groups with a single contact, but this trick/tip is nice way to ensure that your messages get to right person and could help avoid embarrassing accidents.
[via Lifehacker]
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