Redirect Vs. Forward Email
When you receive an email message that you believe will interest or benefit someone else, your email software provides two basic methods of sharing that communication with your desired recipient: forwarding or redirecting the message. These two options produce dramatically different results when it comes to the form and usefulness of the message you pass along.
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Forwarding
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If you're a savvy, long-time email user, you use forwarding to share information with others who didn't receive the original message but can use its contents. The subject line on your recipient's forwarded copy usually begins with "Fwd." In the message body, forwarding generally shows the original message content as a quotation, indented and highlighted, with message details at the top, including the original recipient's contact information, the date and time the message was sent, the subject and other details from the message header. HTML-formatted email messages lose that formatting when they're forwarded, which may obscure links as well as text styling and images.
Redirection
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In contrast to the limits of forwarding, with its reformatted message body, redirection passes on a message with its formatting intact, as if the redirected recipient received the original transmission. The sole difference between the original and redirected messages lies in the subject line, which now shows the redirector's name and email address at the end. When an email's formatting provides critical functionality tied to its content, redirection is the sharing method of choice. Unfortunately, not all email software natively supports message redirection, which means you have to add a third-party plugin to your email application.
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Forms of Forwarding
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Along with individual users' ability to share individual messages with others, forwarding serves as a means of sending all your email to an address besides the one you typically use, just as a postal forwarding order sends on mail to a new or alternate physical address. This form of email forwarding requires server-side settings to trigger each message to be sent onward when it arrives from its sender, as opposed to single-message forwarding, which relies on client-side settings to create and send a message copy. Individual email providers support this functionality to greater or lesser extents. If it's a service you expect you'll need for your personal email, check for it before you sign up with an email provider.
Considerations
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Although you may find it useful or amusing to forward or redirect individual messages to others, enabling them to share in a joke, sign up for a special offer, use a merchant discount code or read an emailed newsletter, think twice before you click "Send." Ask yourself whether your intended recipient would request the message, let alone thank you for it. Otherwise, your good intentions can wind up giving your recipient one more message to delete.
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References
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