How to Send an Email to Undisclosed Recipients in Outlook

"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.)

• 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:

• 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.