To:, CC:, and BCC:

Addressing

We’re all used to seeing To:, CC: and BCC: as well as Forward, Reply and Reply All but do we really know what they are, what they mean, and how to use them? We’ll review that this time.

To: is most obviously the main recipient of the email. It can be one address or multiple addresses, all of which go in the To: field. Note that I said “recipient” and not “person” or “individual.” Why did I do that? Well, an email address is often a person but it can be associated with a function. Say, at a business, they may have an email address of info -at- <business>. Email to that address might be handled by any number of people. So, the contents of To: and, in fact, any other address field in an email can be a person but it can also reference a group or anything that the owner of that site or domain (the part after the “@”) wants it to be.

CC: (for Carbon Copy - throwback) are those other addresses that are not the main recipients but addresses that we want to be informed of the subject and content of the email. To: and CC: play other roles that we’ll discuss a little later.

BCC: - now what is that? That’s “Blind Carbon Copy” and those are recipients whose email addresses aren’t shown to the other recipients, not even the others who are on the BCC: list. That may seem sneaky and it is in some cases but there are legitimate uses for BCC:. I run some Zoom tech meetings. To protect the email addresses of the people who want to know about upcoming sessions, I will put their addresses in the BCC: field. They will all get the email but the address of everyone else in the BCC: list will be hidden. Of course, those in the To: and CC: field will be shown so it behooves ALL recipients to make note of whether their email address is in the To: or CC: field before they do a “Reply All”.

Replying

And that brings us to responding to emails. Reply generally goes to the sender of the email (I say generally because there is a field, often hidden by the email client called “Reply-To” - we won’t discuss that field at this time). “Reply All” goes to not only the sender but also to those email addresses in the To: and CC: fields. And that’s why I say it behooves all recipients to notice if their email address is in the To: or CC: field if they do a Reply All. Note: those email addresses in the BCC: field will NOT receive the rreply because they don’t show up in any recipient’s copy of the email. So, as the sender of the original email, it’s up to you to forward any replies to those you put on original email’s the BCC list. But, be sure when forwarding you put those addresses on the BCC list just like you did on the original email.

Further, if you decide you want to reply to the email, consider very seriously if your response should go to just the sender, go to every recipient, go to a subset of the recipients, or go to some of the recipients as well as some others. Yes, you can edit those that will get your Reply as well as your Reply All. Regardless of whether you’re doing a Reply or Reply All, you can add or delete email addresses to remove some recipients or to add some. It can be quite annoying and perhaps even embarrassing if you Reply All to an email that has a lot of recipients in the To: or CC: fields when the only recipient needs to be the sender. A common example would be an email sent to hundreds of volunteers email addresses announcing a new schedule. If you need to let the sender know that you won’t be available, use Reply to reply to the sender and maybe fill in a few other pertinent recipients who should know about your availability. Not everyone needs to know about that. Of course you could use Reply All if you are conscientious and remove those email addresses that don’t need to know about your availability but that can often be more work than just using Reply.

That’s all for this time

I hope you have a better understanding of To:, CC:, and BCC: and what Reply and Reply All do and how to use them. Don't hesitate to write to me if you have questions!

As always, my intent is to help you understand the basics and equip you to search for more detailed information.

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