Send to “Undisclosed Recipients” in Outlook

At some point in your life you have probably seen an email come across your inbox with “Undisclosed Recipients” in the To: field. These types of emails are primarily used by departments (i.e. HR), vendors, or individuals who need to send a common email to a set of mutually exclusive email addresses. For example, a Human Resources manager needs to send out a reminder email to a group of company employees that need to be drug tested. The manager does not want the employees to know about each other because of privacy and courtesy reasons, but the common email needs to be sent to over 100 people. Instead of sending the same email a hundred times, the manager will use “Undisclosed Recipients” to send the email once to all parties involved. When each employee receives the email, they will not be able to see what other employees the email was sent to, thereby preserving the anonymity of each recipient. This is just one example of many other useful applications sending to Undisclosed Recipients can have.

Now that you have seen an example and have pondered the benefits of the Undisclosed Recipient, it is time to show you how to use it.

How to send to Undisclosed Recipients in Outlook.

1. Start by showing the Bcc: (Blind Carbon Copy) address bar.

• In Outlook, click New Message to create a new email message.
• On the toolbar of the new email message, click Options and check Bcc

2.Properly address the email.

• In the To: field, you will need to enter the following:
  “Undisclosed Recipients” < you@yourdomain.com >
• We need to use the Bcc or Blind Carbon Copy to input the addresses of your recipients. This can be multiple single addresses or a distribution list.

3.Once your email has been composed and all the recipients’ addresses are in the Bcc field, you can send it.

That’s it! Now when you need to send a common email to mutually exclusive recipients just use the “Undisclosed Recipients” format to help keep everyone’s email private.