Surely on more than one occasion you have opened your email and wondered what To and BCC are or what To, CC or BCC mean. We see these fields every day when writing an email but most of the time we ignore them because we don’t know what they are for. We simply put the recipient’s address in the first box, fill in the subject and body of the message and click Send. But …. Did you know that these fields are not there for decoration and are really useful?
In today’s article we are going to explain what the To, To, To, CC, BCC and BBC options are and what they are used for in your email. You will see that these concepts are easy to understand and are especially useful if you use your email for work purposes. Here we go!
What is To / For
Let’s start our list with the simplest field that you probably already know: To. Here you should enter the recipient’s email address. If the message is addressed to only one person, simply type his or her address in this field. If it is addressed to more than one person, you can add as many emails as you want in this field. However, you must take into account that the e-mail must be addressed to all of them or that the information it contains is of general interest.
To give an example: Imagine that you want to send an email to your friends Enrique and Ana and that in it you want to tell them that you have seen a Chinese record at a very good price. Simply fill in the To box with both of your email addresses and write the email addressed to both of you. just like that!
Important: For / To Field Hazards
At first you may think that adding many recipients in the “To” field is harmless, but you should be careful. If you are a fan of chain letters or use your email as your company’s mailing list, this is of interest to you. If you are not careful, you can be fined quite a lot in this respect.
A person’s email address is private and, therefore, if you send mass mailings sharing another person’s address you are violating their privacy. In addition, these addresses that have been shared with the rest of the recipients can be used in SPAM or junk mail lists.
When sending to a list where the recipients are not known, ALL email addresses must be in the “Bcc” field. This way they will not be revealed to anyone, ensuring your privacy.
What is CC
The acronym CC stands for Carbon Copy, although due to its function it is much more useful to associate it with With Copy. This function is used to add recipients that we want to monitor or be aware of the content of an email but without the email in question being addressed to them. In short, it is used to send a copy of an email to a recipient who is not the direct recipient of the message.
Those who are in the CC field of an email are not obliged to reply to it, although they may do so if they have something to contribute. The most common way to do this is to click Reply to all. This option will include all recipients (To and CC) in the reply.
Continuing with the previous example, you decide that your cantagame colleagues, who also like these discs, will be interested in monitoring the email. So, you add them in the CC box of your email.
What is BCC / BCC
BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy or, if you prefer, with Blind Copy. Its English homonym is BCC, which stands for Blind Carbon Copy. Here we must write one or more recipients to whom the email is not addressed but we want them to know its content. What is the difference between BCC and CC? Very simple. Those addresses that we add in Blind Carbon Copy will be invisible to the rest of the recipients of this email.
If you have received an email in which you are included in BCC, it is best to be careful when replying. In these cases, you will most likely want to just reply, and not reply to all. You could give yourself away, if you are not supposed to have received that email.
Also remember that if your message is addressed to a distribution list, ALL of its recipients must be in the Bcc field and not in the To field. And if you are going to send a chain message… better delete it and don’t do it. They are very annoying and considered Spam. Nobody wants to receive them, let alone read them.
Let’s continue with our example. After composing the email, you think that maybe a friend of yours will be interested in the disc but you smell that there is some healthy rivalry between her and Enrique. So, you better add her in blind copy and save yourself some trouble. This way, she will not appear as a recipient of the email even though she will receive it.
What is Reply to / Reply to
Some mail clients let you specify a Reply-to address. Here you can specify an email address other than the one you used to send the message. Anyone replying to it will direct your message to this other address.
Webmail accounts such as Gmail or the online version of Outlook usually do not offer this option, as it does not make much sense. In Thunderbird, it is achieved by using the drop-down list in the To box.
In other programs, such as the Outlook desktop application, you must configure it in the account options.
How to send an email without showing the addresses
Now that you know the basics of the To, Cc and Bcc fields, you can probably answer this question for yourself. To be able to send an email without the recipients being able to see the other email addresses, simply write their emails in the Bcc field. In this way, each of the recipients of the same email will receive the message, but will be unable to see the emails of the other participants of the message.
If you want only some of the recipients to be visible, simply use the To or Cc fields for those emails you want to appear while the rest should be written in the Bcc field. It’s that simple!
Remember that when you are going to send an e-mail you will always need a recipient, but it is not necessary for the recipient to be in the To field. You can choose to use only the Bcc field. This is especially important if you are sending a mass email or if you have a mailing list, as sharing a personal email without the owner’s permission is punishable by law.
Use your email like a pro
Now that you know what To / For, CC, BCC and CBB are and what they are for, you can get the most out of your email. As you can see, these are all very simple concepts that you will be able to put into practice from now on, we hope you found them helpful! And remember, if you liked the article, don’t forget to share it with your friends through social networks.
