If you’re looking to send an email in Gmail to a large number of undisclosed recipients, you may wish to hide their email addresses from others. It’s easy to do using the blind carbon copy (BCC) feature.
It’s possible to send emails without identifying all of the recipients by sending the email as a BCC to certain addresses. If you want to do this using Gmail in your web browser, open the Gmail website and select the “Compose” button to open a new message.
If you’re replying to (or forwarding) an email at the bottom of an existing email chain, select the Pop-Out Reply button in the top-right corner of the quick reply box to make changes to the intended recipients.
In the “New Message” box, compose the email message to your specifications, adding the subject and email body text as required (or editing it, if you’re replying to or forwarding an existing email chain).
You can add a main recipient (shared with all other recipients) in the “To” field box, but this isn’t required. To add a BCC recipient and hide that recipient’s email address from the message, however, select the “BCC” option positioned to the right of the “To” field box.
This will insert a “BCC” box immediately below the “To” field. Add the various email addresses or email lists that you wish to send your message to before selecting “Send” to send the email.
Once it’s opened, the email addresses you’ve placed in the “BCC” field box will be hidden from all other recipients (including other BCC recipients). All other elements of the email will remain visible, however, including any standard or carbon copy (CC) email addresses.
Send Emails to Undisclosed Recipients in Gmail on Mobile Devices
The ability to send emails to undisclosed recipients in Gmail is also available in the mobile app for Android, iPhone, or iPad. To begin, open the Gmail app on your device and tap the “Compose” button in the bottom-right corner.
You can also select the Reply option in an existing email to reply to that message, or tap the three-dot menu icon > Forward to begin forwarding it instead.
In the “Compose” menu, select the email account you wish to send the email from using the “From” drop-down menu. Compose the email message as required, adding a subject line and sufficient body text.
You can also add a main email recipient in the “To” box, although this isn’t required. To add one or more BCC recipients, tap the down arrow to the right of the “To” box.
This will make the CC (carbon copy) and BCC (blind carbon copy) fields visible for you to use. To add recipients that will remain hidden, type the recipients’ email addresses (or type the name of a saved list) into the “BCC” field box.
RELATED: How to Create an Email List for Gmail to Send Group Emails
When you’re ready to send the email, tap the Send button in the top-right corner.
The subject and contents of the email will be available to all upon receipt, but the BCC recipient email addresses will remain hidden.
The BCC field isn’t exclusive to Gmail, and you’ll find similar functionality in Outlook and all other email clients and services. If you’re using Gmail in another mail client, look out for the BCC field as you compose your emails to keep your intended email recipients hidden from others.
RELATED: How to Automatically BCC Emails Using Rules in Outlook
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