HOWTO Send Email to Email Groups
at OurLDSFamily.com

An Explanation of how to use these groups

Email groups, as opposed to online services, have no intrusive ads, pop-ups, junk mail, or spam. We are a service of email groups. We do not have a bulletin board type service because email groups are more private and we can control who posts, and who reads our postings. We are a conversation type discussion group. Group members share information with each other, and we all help answer questions or give information and help. We do not post lists of members of any groups. That would be inappropriate for privacy reasons, and also bad policy for the potential of email-address farming that would lead to spam for the members.

One member of our groups submitted the following outline, which she asked us to edit and put here. She wished to be anonymous.

Welcome to e-mail groups! If you are unfamiliar with e-mail groups, a few words of explanation may be in order. 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 server or list owner. Sometimes it will go to the group, or to the individual sending 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.

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?

Another pair of important notes which will save you wondering, "What happened to my email?" are these:

1. Don't send attachments, including pretty backgrounds and fonts. Our email group server software just blocks those by default.
2. Don't send emails to large numbers of recipients. Our email group server software dumps those into the trash bin, too.

Thanks,

Karl L. Pearson,
System Administrator & owner of the sites at
OurLDSFamily.com