I’ve just set up a group for my church on Google Groups after having researched a variety of alternatives and so far, it’s going well. Except for one thing: whenever anyone responds to a message sent to the group, everyone sees it, not just the person who sent in the original message. This is driving some parishioners crazy. How can I fix it?
After having had lists in various places and using a variety of hosting services, I too now am a fan of Google Groups and find that it does a very nice job of hosting my own mailing lists, be they small private lists or large public ones. One list I have was suffering from the same situation as you describe, where every response was sent to everyone on the list, not just the original message sender. Not good.
Fortunately, with a bit of poking around, it turns out not to be too hard to identify the setting you need to tweak.
Start by connecting to the home page of your group. On the right you should see something that looks just like this:
Click on “Settings” and you’ll see:
Now along the top, click on “Email Delivery” and scroll down just a little bit. You should see:
As you can see, there are a bunch of different options here: the one you want is the second, “Replies are sent to the author of the message.”
Make sure you now jump to the bottom and “Save” your changes, and you’ve just eased the burden of your mailing list members.
Even using the old interface, it is possible to use REPLY ALL since the group address is included in the TO address. Is there any way to prevent this? Our group is getting a lot of unnecessary messages.
Did you find a way to block the reply all ?
Yeah, the “new” interface is a nightmare, actually. There are so many features that are impossible to find now. I’m working on some updated how-to articles, tho, so stay tuned!
My version of Google Groups does not look like that. I’m using the new version. How can I make these changes in the new version of Google groups?
I just want to reply to the sender, not the whole group and I can’t figure out how to do it. We get our message through personal emails (mine is Yahoo) so when I click the respond to sender option, it still goes to the whole group.
HELP HELP HELP,
Lori
I made the setting change to my Google Group such that post replies go only to the author. however email replies are still going to the entire group. I’m looking for a setting that will allow users to send an email from a personal account to the Google Group email address, but will only result in a reply to the email author when a person replies to the email. Any suggestions?
Great post. Very helpful. Exactly what I was looking for.