"Undisclosed" Is the Kind of Word That Can Get You Into Trouble
It's like trying to newscast a soccer match shouting: "What an inawful shot! Pele disunstroke marvelously, not undespite of the goalie being precisely a-misplaced."
In emails, disclosing can get you into trouble, too. If you forward a message to a number of friends (some of whom are unknown to each other) by placing all the recipients in the Cc: field, you effectively share private email addresses with strangers. A long Cc: list does not look good either.
Fortunately, we have the Bcc: field in Outlook — and we have "Undisclosed recipients".
Send an Email to Undisclosed Recipients in Outlook
First, we'll create a Contact just for addressing our "Undisclosed recipients" to ease the pain of repetitive typing and avoid errors. (You can rely on Outlook's auto-complete feature instead if you prefer.)
- ›› Step by Step Screenshot Walkthrough (using Outlook 2003)
- Click the down arrow of the New button.
- Select Contact.
- Type "Undisclosed recipients" under Full Name....
- Type your email address under E-mail....
- Click Save and Close.
- If you already have an existing address book entry bearing your email address, make sure Add this as a new contact anyway is checked in the Duplicate Contact Detected dialog and click OK.
Now, to send an email to multiple but hidden recipients with "Undisclosed recipients" in the To: field:
- ›› Step by Step Screenshot Walkthrough (using Outlook 2003)
- Start with a new email message in Outlook.
- Click the To... button.
- Highlight Undisclosed recipients.
- Click To ->.
- Highlight all people in your address book to whom you want to send the message.
- Click Bcc ->.
- Click OK.
- Add any additional recipients' email addresses to the Bcc: field.
- Separate addresses with semicolons.
- Compose your message and eventually click Send.
For Your Email Marketing Needs
If you're looking for fully blown email marketing (including personalization and direct addressing of recipients), take a look at Outlook add-ons created for just that purpose. Outlook's merge to email function may be another, maybe a bit clumsy, option.
