April 19, 2007

Auto-Complete Complication

The email program I use has an Auto-complete feature. Rather than entering someone's entire name or email address, I type the first couple letters and the program offers matches from my address book.

My address book is not exceptionally organized. Some entries are complete; some reference a first name only, some a last name only and still others indicate the email address as the first name. I have to admit that some people are in the address book twice. Maintaining my address book isn't something I set aside time to do.

Recently, I was sending an email to my siblings. I entered the first few letters of everyone's name in the 'To' box, wrote the note and pressed send.

A secondary verification window opened. Before the email could be delivered, I had to confirm some of the selected recipients. So, I chose from an assortment of Joe s that the program has selected. The email program had identified names similar to Lori, too. It allowed me to select from 3 Gloria s, 2 Lori s and 1 Cloris. I made my selection and the email left my desktop and was wirelessly carried across North America to reach the 5 selected recipients.

As it turned out, I hadn't read the second window carefully enough. I selected Gloria, instead of Lori. That might have been OK if I had selected the Gloria that was my Mom, but such was not the case.

I realized what I had done, so I jotted off a note to my friend Gloria explaining why she was being asked to weigh in on the topic, and still giving her an opportunity to voice her choice. Then I sent Lori, the right Lori, the original note.


I've faced much teasing since then. I've refreshed my Outlook skills via the Knowledge Base at the Microsoft® website on How to Send Email (someone was kind enough to send me the link), and reviewed The Dos and Don'ts of Email.
I'll subscribe to Jeffrey Steele's newsletter, if that what it'll take! But to give my vote completely to Gloria, just ain't fair! I suppose it won't be long until my spot at the dining room table is given to KQM, too.


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1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't sit me next to any left-handed people . . .