The ins and outs of Bcc

If you want to hide the names and addresses of recipients in an email, you can use Bcc, which stands for “Blind carbon copy”.

Here's how it works.

By default, a new email message has a To field and a Cc or “Carbon copy” field.

When you send a message, recipients can not only see who sent it, but also who else received it.

Let's send the message again, this time using Bcc.

First add the Bcc field by going to the OPTIONS tab in the new message and clicking Bcc.

Then, add a name to the field, and Send the message.

The recipients can still see the addresses in the To and Cc fields, but not the Bcc field.

Even if they click Reply All, they will neither see nor be able to send their response to the addresses on the Bcc field.

Also, note that the recipient who is on the Bcc field cannot see the field.

Only you can see who is on the Bcc field of an email message. Click the Sent Items folder to open the original message.

Bcc can be used to both protect the privacy of individuals and keep names confidential.

For example, let's say you want to invite someone to a meeting, but you don’t want any of the other attendees to know about it.

You can use Bcc when you set up a meeting, too.

You won't see To, Cc or Bcc fields here. In a meeting request, you add people to the Required or Optional fields.

The Resources field is typically used to book a conference room, but you can also use it as a Bcc field.

When you add an address to Resources, only the person who organized the meeting can see it.

Outlook automatically adds resources to the Location field. So delete the names here, before you send the request.

As you can see, all the names and resources appear in the To field.

But don't worry. To the attendees, none of the information entered in the Resources field is visible. Not even in the request received by the person in the Resources field.

Up next, we'll go into more detail on ways to use Bcc.