Your email client does not know who was in the original BCC field. That information is not sent to your SMTP server by the sender’s SMTP server. Which is pretty much the whole point.
Your email client does not know who was in the original BCC field. That information is not sent to your SMTP server by the sender’s SMTP server. Which is pretty much the whole point.
It was? When? I guess I haven’t received word yet. If I heard someone say “courtesy copy” instead of “carbon copy,” I would think they were from another planet.
Wasn’t it “Tschotschke’s,” as in Yiddish for “knick-knacks”?
In the Navy, the difference between a “To” addressee and a “Courtesy Copy” addressee is the “To” addressee is an action addressee. In other words, if you’re the “CC” recipient you don’t have to do anything other than be aware of the information and who’s supposed to be working on it. The “To” recipient is the one who’s supposed to do the work.
Yeah, yeah Biblio, I remember the dark ages. Hmmm…I’m gonna do some digging at home and see if I can find my cite. Get back to y’all tomorrow.
Well, CurtC, (can I call you “CC”? 
), I sent you a memo about the name change to “courtesy” from “carbon”, and it was CC’ed to everyone in the office and I know they all got it. Get with it, slacker!
Another irritating Navy change to things that work without needing to be changed but the Navy does it anyway: “Message Traffic” (teletype messages) don’t have CC, they have INFO addressees. Same thing.
BCC is no different to photocopying a paper memo and distributing it to some person unnamed in it; it can also be used to archive copies in a central location.
As others have said, emails often contain requests or instructions; the instructions are for the person(s) in the TO: field, the people in the CC: field are interested parties, but not those from whom action is expected.
e.g.
TO:Fred (Goods Inwards)
CC:Jim (Fabrication)
Subject: Pending order
Body: Fred, I’ve ordered some widgets for Jim, please make sure he gets them as soon as they arrive.
Of course, I do read the bcc’d emails. Then I ask the person not to bcc me anymore. If they continue to bcc me, I forward the email to the original recipients, so they know I got a copy.
Re: protecting others email addresses; good point. But I’ve made some new aquaintances, friends of friends, from a few accidental reply-to-alls.
But I think bcc is like bugging the converence room. People should know who is in the conversation.
And can so easily be abused by unscrupulous manipulative co-workers.
I also hate people who automatically reply-to-all. I think that option should come with a pop-up warning.
BCCs are considered important in the business world. You need to keep bosses and colleagues and central files informed of what’s going on, but it’s not necessary for the client to know about it. Indeed, it is often considered critical that the client not know about it. It’s not any outsiders’ business how you go about communicating internally.
Absolutely; there may be email addresses within a company that are only ever used internally; you may not want people outside of the business to even know about them.
Re: Office Space
Are you referring to the memo joke from the beginning, where Peter’s bosses all think he didn’t get the TPS memo?
And no, they don’t use the Yiddish spelling for the restaurant. There’s a scene (I forget when) where you can see it spelled out.
I have used BCC consistently in dealing with directors and managers who refuse to acknowledge tasks.
They say they aren’t informed but a simple BCC to the director or managers boss confirms he WAS emailed on the subject.
A read receipt does not always work on all client emails.
Also dealing in my business if you were to CC the Director of Sales, often the clients will suddenly only want to deal with the director, regardless of the request.
This is something that a BCC solves. BCC means it is confidental to you. Forwarding ANY confidental information on to someone is very unprofessional.
Well, when I send office mail, I usually bcc myself. That way, I have a saved copy with all the headers.
I also sometimes BCC my boss in e-mails to clients. It’ll be something like
That way my boss knows that I sent it, and also knows exactly what I sent. I bcc it instead of cc’ing it because it’s not the client’s business that I copied it to my boss. It’s a strictly administrative, FYI bcc.
I think it’s interesting that some e-mail applications (like Outlook) don’t have the bcc: option at all.
Huh? Outlook does have the bcc option; I’m looking at it right now.
In Outlook 2000, in a new mail document, choose View->BCC field.