How do I get the text "Undisclosed Recipients:" to display on To:

[Greystone Guru]

I periodically receive messages with the text "Undisclosed Recipients" on the
To: line. I presume that the sender placed my e-mail address and addresses
of others on the Bcc: line in order to maintain privacy for each sender. I
use Bcc: in this way but cannot figure out what steps in Outlook 2003 are
necessary to have messages delivered as described above. Is it possible for
each recipient on the Bcc: list to also see his or her address only on the
To: line?
e.g., To: Mary smith; Undisclosed Recipients.

Thanks

 

[VanguardLH]

I periodically receive messages with the text "Undisclosed Recipients" on the
To: line. I presume that the sender placed my e-mail address and addresses
of others on the Bcc: line in order to maintain privacy for each sender.

How depends on what e-mail client the sender used. For Outlook, create
a dummy record in your Contacts folder (or any any contact-type folder
listed in the Outlook Address Book container). Name it "Undisclosed
Recipients" although something like "<newslettername> Members" or
something else that looks cutsy to you and reinforces to your recipients
the purpose of your bulk mailing. For an e-mail address, put in your
own. After all, they should have it anyway in the return-path headers
of your e-mails to them. If you don't want to read your own bulk
mailings in your Inbox, make a rule that moves/deletes e-mails that have
that string (name) in the To header.

I use Bcc: in this way but cannot figure out what steps in Outlook
2003 are necessary to have messages delivered as described above.

Why? None of the recipients are going to see their own e-mail addresses
or those of others, anyway. Why do you need a "filler" in the To
header?

Also, there are some anti-spam filters that will trigger on this string
in To header. It is recognized as a common string used when sending
bulk mailings.

Is it possible for each recipient on the Bcc: list to also see his or
her address only on the To: line?

Sure. Use a bulk mailing program instead of a personal e-mail client.
If you insist on remaining with Outlook as the mail agent, you could use
MailMerge in Word to do what you want but the versions of Word and
Outlook must match for integration to work.

 

[VanguardLH]

Oops, forgot to say (before submitting my prior post) that once you
define the bogus contact record then that is what you use in the To
field. When you compose a new e-mail, select that bogus contact to put
into the To field.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

Many ISPs do this by default when the TO address is blank (others simply refuse to send) You can do this yourself by creating a contact with the display name "undisclosed recipients" and have your email address as the contact record.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, Greystone Guru asked:

| I periodically receive messages with the text "Undisclosed
| Recipients" on the To: line. I presume that the sender placed my
| e-mail address and addresses of others on the Bcc: line in order to
| maintain privacy for each sender. I use Bcc: in this way but cannot
| figure out what steps in Outlook 2003 are necessary to have messages
| delivered as described above. Is it possible for each recipient on
| the Bcc: list to also see his or her address only on the To: line?
| e.g., To: Mary smith; Undisclosed Recipients.
|
| Thanks

 

[Greystone Guru]

I see I omitted in my post that I am using Outlook 2003. Also, I have set up
an account profile in Outlook to manage a Gmail account; this is the one I
use to forward messages from a team leader. This topic turns out to be
fragmented among 8 or 10 threads dating back to 2005, so the topic is of
interest to a fair number of people.

I should also mention that SnapFish is among the message sources that send
out mail with undisclosed.recipient: on the To... line and no other recipient
identified.

You make a good point that some ISPs, and some users, may filter messages
that have "Undisclosed..." text on the To... line. That's reason enough for
me to abandon this inquiry but, since a more important goal for me is to get
messages delivered. But in TRYING to make it work I learned a couple of
unsavory things about Outlook 2003 -- which will need to be revisited when/if
I move to Office 2007+ One is that if you leave the To... line blank, it
appears that the message is NOT sent to the names on Bcc... mention is made
of this behavior in another post. Also, if I set up a user ID of
"Undisclosed..." and specify the e-mail address as the one I am sending from,
the message seems to just echo back to me; again it does not get to those on
the Bcc.. list. I suppose actions by the ISP supporting my Internet
connection (one of Time-Warner's flavors) could have a bearing on all this --
that's impossible to determine. in general though the rules seem to be (1)
put SOMETHING on the To... line (2) don't name that something
"Undisclosed.Recipients."

I'll look at Mail Merge as an alternate... Thanks