Sending from Contacts Category using bcc:

[ProfDD]

I often send e-mails to various sets of members of my contacts, for
which I have a fairly rich set of categories and custom user fields.
Sometimes I would like to send to sets of these contacts without
disclosing their e-mail addresses to others in the list. Distribution
lists are too static and "fragile" for my kind of usage. I know about
using categories to get the sets of contacts into the "To:" field. How
do I get the sets of contacts into the "bcc:" field ?

I use Outlook 2002, Win XP SP1 Home ed., Office XP Std.

1. Is there a way that I have yet to discover in Outlook 2002 that
doesn't involve doing this manually ?

2. Does Outlook 2003 have a solution ?

3. Is there something on the MS development horizon that addresses this
?

4. Can this be done with some kind of automated simple hack ?

5. Does anyone make an add-on for this ?

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP Outlook]]

Sorry, professor. Alas, you have been abandoned. Further replies are
inline.

I often send e-mails to various sets of members of my contacts, for
which I have a fairly rich set of categories and custom user fields.
Sometimes I would like to send to sets of these contacts without
disclosing their e-mail addresses to others in the list. Distribution
lists are too static and "fragile" for my kind of usage.

I agree completely. But DL's are the only grouping method that allows
you to select the type of recipient field.

I know about

using categories to get the sets of contacts into the "To:" field. How
do I get the sets of contacts into the "bcc:" field ?

I use Outlook 2002, Win XP SP1 Home ed., Office XP Std.

1. Is there a way that I have yet to discover in Outlook 2002 that
doesn't involve doing this manually ?

No. Cut and paste from To: to BCC: is the only method when using Categories

2. Does Outlook 2003 have a solution ?

No. Nothing changed here. The only change in Outlook 2003 is the ability
to expand and alter a DL on a per message basis. But since we're not
using DL's, that won't help you.

3. Is there something on the MS development horizon that addresses this
?

We would have no way of knowing. Everyone here is an end user, same as
you. You can send Outlook feature requests to
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp

4. Can this be done with some kind of automated simple hack ? No.

5. Does anyone make an add-on for this ?

None that I am aware of. Sounds like a good opportunity since this is
one of many voids with which Outlook has left us.