Computer and Software Support


Differences between the TO, CC, and BCC field in email 

When you send an email you have three address sections (BCC my not be turned on so you may only see two). The different sections are as follows

  1. To: - Is the main recipients of the email.
  2. CC: - Stands for Carbon Copy. Email addresses listed here will receive a copy of the email that you sent to the people listed in the To: field. Everyone listed under the CC field will see everyone’s email addresses that are under the To and CC field.
  3. BCC: - Stands for Blind Carbon Copy. Email addresses listed here will receive a copy of the email that you sent to the people listed in the To: field. Everyone listed under the CC field will see everyone’s email address that are listed under the To and CC field but will not see the addresses listed in the BCC field. Each person listed on the BCC field will not see the email addresses of other recipients.

 

Reasons you would use CC and BCC 

  1. CC - You may want to use the CC field when you request time off from your manager but you need to let Human Resources know the request was made.  The action has to be handled by the manager but the task needs to be recorded in HR. Putting HR in CC tells them they don’t need to take action but it is for their records only.
  2. BCC - Is used when you need to send an email to numerous email addresses but you don’t want to share the list of email addresses to everyone that the email is being sent to. BCC allows you to send the email to everyone and no one will see the other email addresses listed in the BCC field.

 Note: I don’t know if the email programs have a limit to how many people you can have listed in the To, CC, and BCC fields but many ISP providers do have a limit. To find out the limit, you will need to contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP). The purpose of the limit is to prevent spamming.

 Each email client (such as Edora, Outlook, Hotmail, AOL so forth) has their own way of inputting email addresses in the To, CC, and BCC fields. You will need to consult the help files, or ISP for exact procedures of adding the names to the fields.

 Some of the different methods of how email addresses are typed in the TO and CC field.

  1. Some providers have you use a coma (,) between the email addresses to indicate there is more than one email address.
  2. Some providers have you use a semi-colon (;) between the email addresses to indicate there is more than one email address.

 

Some of the different methods of how email addresses are typed in the BCC  field.

  1. Some providers have you use a coma (,) between the email addresses to indicate there is more than one email address.
  2. Some providers have you use a semi-colon (;) between the email addresses to indicate there is more than one email address. (Outlook 2003 uses the semi-colon and would look like this name@isp.com; joe@ispname.com)
  3. Some providers have you use the parenthesis between the email addresses to indicate it is for BCC. (I am not sure but I think AOL uses parenthesis so it would look something like  (name@isp.com), (joe@ispname.com) )

 You can also use the address book to choose if you want to send the recipient the email via TO, CC or the BCC field.

 The BCC field may not automatically show on the email page when you are writing an email. You might have to enable it. Each email client has their own way of turning on or off the BCC field so you will have to consult the help files on that particular email client. Below is for Outlook and Outlook express.

 To turn BCC field on choose the program you use.

Outlook

  1. Open Outlook
  2. Create a new email
  3. Click on “View” on the toolbar.
  4. Make sure there is a check on BCC field.

 

Outlook Express

 

  1. Open Outlook Express
  2. Create an email.
  3. Click on View on the toolbar.
  4. Make sure there is a check on All header.

 

Note: If you forward an email and choose blind copy, the people on the blind copy will not see other addresses listed under BCC but everyone will see the addresses listed in the original email. Only way to avoid sharing the email addresses of the original email is to copy and paste the body of the email to another email then use BCC.

 NOTE: To send email, an email address has to be in the TO field. Therefore if you are using the BCC field, you also have to have an address in the TO field. All you have to do is put the sender’s email in the TO field. Everyone on the email will already have your email so you are not providing them something they don’t already know about.  

For example, lets say support@upgradenrepair.com wants to email John Doe, Bobleech and Mary. Support should do the following

  1. Put support@upgradenrepair.com in the To field (everyone will see support@upgradenrepair.com anyways

  2. Put john Doe's email, Bob Leech's email, and Mary's email in the BCC field

   

Here is what everyone will see

  1. John Doe will see the email from Support but will not see Bob Leech's email and Mary's email.

  2. Bob Leech will see the email from support but will not see John Doe's email and Mary's email.

  3. Mary will see the email from support but will not see John Doe's email and Bob Leech's email.

For more information on Blind copy click here

For dangers of forwarding email addresses or not deleting email addresses click here.