in message
Is there a way that you can email multiple recipients using the To
field but
have it work like the BCC field. In other words, I send an email to
5 people,
they receive the email with their name in the To: field but they
can't see
the addresses or names of anyone else that received the email
No, the Bcc field is only that: a field that is displayed in the UI
within the e-mail program. The To, Cc, and Bcc *fields* are used by
the e-mail program to generate an aggregate list of recipients and
then it issues a RCPT-TO command for each recipient to the mail server
when you send an e-mail. While the e-mail program may include headers
in the *data* of your message for the To and Cc fields (by adding the
To and Cc headers in the data that comprises your message), it
should/will not add a Bcc header to that message data (and why your
recipients won't get that header in their copy to know to whom else
that e-mail got sent). The recipient never gets to see the list of
RCPT-TO commands that the sender's e-mail program sent to the sender's
mail server. Just because the recipients don't see the RCPT-TO list
or a Bcc header doesn't mean that only 1 recipient (them) was listed
in the Bcc header. You could specify multiple recipients in the Bcc
header so, yes, the Bcc field already acts like the To field to
specify one, or more, recipients.
If you want each recipient to actually see their e-mail address in the
To or Cc headers in the copy of the e-mail that they receive from you
(i.e., to get around anti-spam filters that users may define that
tag/delete e-mails where they are not listed in To/Cc as a recipient)
then you have to use something in addition to or instead of Outlook
which is just an e-mail client. You could use MailMerge in Word to
send e-mails where only 1 recipient is listed for each copy of the
sent e-mail; however, that results in sending N e-mails for those N
recipients (rather than sending N RCPT-TO commands and 1 DATA command
for your same e-mail sent to all those recipients). You might hit an
anti-spam quota at your e-mail provider that limits how many separate
e-mails you can send, like perhaps 5 e-mails every 20 seconds. You'll
have to experiment to see if MailMerge doesn't trigger an anti-spam
countermeasure by your e-mail provider. The version of Outlook and
Word must match for MailMerge to work.
Otherwise, go get some bulk mailing software. They won't take the
simpleton approach of MailMerge by sending N e-mails for N recipients
but will do like a normal e-mail client and send N RCPT-TO command and
1 DATA command (for the content of your message) which reduces
bandwidth (and hence time) and might eliminating hitting anti-spam
quotas (but the bulk mailing program should let you specify how many
recipients are listed per e-mail, and how many e-mails to send per
minute).
www.slipstick.com lists some bulk mailing programs.
