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### 1.4 Wide Reply

The `message-wide-reply` pops up a message buffer that's a wide reply to the message in the current buffer. A wide reply is a reply that goes out to all people listed in the `To`, `From` (or `Reply-to`) and `Cc` headers.

Message uses the normal methods to determine where wide replies are to go, but you can change the behavior to suit your needs by fiddling with the `message-wide-reply-to-function`. It is used in the same way as `message-reply-to-function` (see Reply).

Addresses that match the `message-dont-reply-to-names` regular expression (or list of regular expressions) will be removed from the `Cc` header. A value of `nil` means exclude your name only.

`message-prune-recipient-rules` is used to prune the addresses used when doing a wide reply. It's meant to be used to remove duplicate addresses and the like. It's a list of lists, where the first element is a regexp to match the address to trigger the rule, and the second is a regexp that will be expanded based on the first, to match addresses to be pruned.

It's complicated to explain, but it's easy to use.

For instance, if you get an email from ‘`foo@example.org`’, but ‘`foo@zot.example.org`’ is also in the `Cc` list, then your wide reply will go out to both these addresses, since they are unique.

To avoid this, do something like the following:

         (setq message-prune-recipient-rules
               '(("^\\([^@]+\\)@\\(.*\\)" "\\1@.*[.]\\2")))

If, for instance, you want all wide replies that involve messages from ‘`cvs@example.org`’ to go to that address, and nowhere else (i.e., remove all other recipients if ‘`cvs@example.org`’ is in the recipient list:

         (setq message-prune-recipient-rules
               '(("cvs@example.org" ".")))

If `message-wide-reply-confirm-recipients` is non-`nil` you will be asked to confirm that you want to reply to multiple recipients. The default is `nil`.