To: or CC: or BCC:

[Peter Hibbs]

I am writing some VBA code in Access 2003 to send multiple emails via
Outlook (using Redemption although I don't think that is relevant in
this situation) for a membership database.

What I am trying to determine is the relationship between the three
fields To:, CC: and BCC:. For example, if I were to send an email to
10 different email addresses, and I don't want the recipients to see
all the email addresses of the other members, I would use the BCC:
field.

The question is - would I copy ALL 10 addresses to the BCC field and
leave the To: field blank (which I don't think works) or do I copy one
email address to the To: field and the other 9 to the BCC: field or do
I copy a dummy email address to the To: field and use the BCC: field
for all the 10 addresses. My tests so far seem to indicate that this
option does work (except that the email address in the To: field does
not seem to receive an email, unless I did something wrong).

What would be the correct procedure in this situation?

Also, is there any limit on the number of email addresses that can be
copied to the BCC: field? I would need about 2000 at the most.

TIA

Peter Hibbs.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

Think about it: If you don't want recipients to see any of the other's
addresses, you don't want to put one of those member addresses in the To
field, do you? You could use a dummy address, but Outlook itself doesn't
care which technique you use. The best approach is to test with the mail
clients you expect your recipients to have and then choose the approach that
looks the best for your scenario.

Ask your email provider about the limit on recipients in a single message.
It's their limit that counts.

Bcc is not the approach I'd use. Sending a message using Bcc makes it more
likely that the message will be rejected by the recipient's spam filter. My
preferred approach would be to send 10 separate messages, with a single To
address for each one.

Or, for a better long-term solution, use a dedicated mailing list
application or host.

 

[Peter Hibbs]

Hi Sue,

Sending one at a time would certainly be an option, not sure about
sending 2000 though. I will need to do some timing tests to see how
long that would take.

The Mailing List app' is an interesting idea. I Googled that and got
quite a few hits, will look into that as well.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, I'll see how I get on with those
options.

Peter Hibbs.

 

[Michael Bauer [MVP - Outlook]]

Put your own address into the To field and the 10 real recipients into BCC.
The number of allowed addresses might be limited by your provider.

--
Best regards
Michael Bauer - MVP Outlook

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Am Wed, 13 May 2009 16:28:16 +0100 schrieb Peter Hibbs:

 

[Peter Hibbs]

Thanks Michael, that would seem a sensible solution.

Peter Hibbs.