Why not just have an easy button that you can click saying Do Not Allow Reply All?
I know that there are some ways you can limit reply-all availability, like in the URL linked here. But there’s a note: If recipients open this email in other mail applications except Microsoft Outlook, such as opening on web page via web mailbox, they can reply all this email.
I’m semi-tech savvy but I’m no programmer. It feels like it should be easy to do, so either I’m totally wrong or email services are really missing out on a great thing they could do.
As the other commentors have said, this isn’t a problem with email services, it’s a problem with email users. If you put all the addresses in the “To:” or “CC:” boxes, its because you want someone to Reply All. If you want to prevent that, put all the recipients in the BCC box.
Its a good idea, but fortunately someone already solved it a good while back. Now we just need a PSA to teach people to stop cramming everyone in the wrong box.
It is slightly the fault of the email clients for the sender that often don’t show BCC by default. It probably would be reasonable for email clients to put a warning up if people are sending to a large number of people without using BCC.
Also their fault because a lot of them have had the Reply All button first before Reply. Outlook, at least, seems to be changing this in some ways.
But putting it first is guaranteeing users will just click the first “reply” and keep writing.
People in my organization do this, and it’s great. The only downside to that is when you want recipients to know exactly who else the email was sent to. Not super common, in my experience, but it does occur.
When I do bcc to a big list, I describe the distribution in the email header. Like “To: all users of the xxx application” or “To: All Engineering employees at the yyy site.”