Why does a "Reply" to a sent mail, send back to me only...

[oweri02]

Hello...

I'm used to using Google's GMail, and a reply to a sent message has the
intelligence to say "clearly you want to send this to the original
recipient"... why doesn't Microsoft's Outlook do this by default?

Likewise, a reply-all to a sent message, puts me in the recipient, when "as
I'm sending it, I clearly get a copy in my sent-items anyway" - why would
outlook put me as a recipient?

Any thoughts?

 

[oweri02]

How very kind of you Cody...

"Software writers didn't think that Outlook users would be so stupid as to
reply to a message they had themselves sent..."

So you are saying you've never replied to a message, and then followed it up
with an update before someone else has replied... oh how "stupid" of me for
even thinking to be proactive...

In Q1, it was a simple reply...

In Q2, it was a reply to all (clearly better than a forward, and then
copy/paste all the recipients)

Both scenarios Google Mail clearly felt that their "user base" had
intelligence to be proactive... perhaps the stupidity is more with the
application, rather than the user base?

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

I'm used to using Google's GMail, and a reply to a sent message has the
intelligence to say "clearly you want to send this to the original
recipient"... why doesn't Microsoft's Outlook do this by default?

A reply to a sent message always goes only to the original sender. That's the
definition of a reply. I don't know of any real mail clients that reply to
anyone besides the sender. I don't consider web interfaces to be mail
clients. They don't use any mail protocols to communicate with the server
because you're interacting directly with the server.

Likewise, a reply-all to a sent message, puts me in the recipient, when "as
I'm sending it, I clearly get a copy in my sent-items anyway" - why would
outlook put me as a recipient?

Are you using gmail as a POP account or an IMAP account? Gmail has some
peculiarities that can make you get copies of messages you send, independent
of Outlook's saving of Sent Items. On top if that, if the address used to
deliver the message (i.e., the one that appears in the recipient field)
doesn't match exactly the address you hve defined as the sender address in the
account, Outlook can't tell the recipient address is yours and so includes it
in the Reply All. For example, if you have two mail addresses and forward one
to gmail, using Reply All on a message sent to the second address but received
via the gmail account will cause Outlook to include that address in the reply
because it doesn't match the address of the account that is replying.

 

[dougcl]

A reply to a sent message always goes only to the original sender. That's the
definition of a reply.

The OP is talking about a followup to their own message, which is the sender amending a sent mail and re-sending to the original recipient. A very common use case!

How you present this option to the user is a matter of usability. By defining the action on the reply button as you have done above, you eliminate what is, in my opinion, the most intuitive option: allow the user to hit replyon their own sent message to followup. This option is the most intuitive because it is the exact same action that a user would take to follow up on amessage received from someone else. What client would make the assumption that the user is trying to followup to herself? Well, this is exactly what Outlook is doing and it is very annoying. Gmail client gets it right.

And now, to the OP's question, anyone know a way to change this in Outlook?

Doug