How to Add a BCC Field to Emails in Outlook for Mac

Melissa Holt Read more October 11, 2018

Plenty of organizations require employees to use Microsoft’s suite of Office products, which includes Outlook. For those of us who are accustomed to Apple Mail instead, this can be a challenging transition, but Outlook is actually a solid alternative!
One small but important difference between Apple Mail and Outlook is using the app’s blind carbon copy (BCC) feature when sending emails. When you add a recipient to the BCC field of an email, that person will receive the email but nobody else in the To or standard CC fields will see the BCC recipient’s email address.
There are many reasons to use BCC, ranging from sending emails to diverse groups of people (i.e., the same email sent to both family and coworkers), protecting the privacy of certain recipient’s email address, and simply keeping the email header clean in situations where it’s not important for your recipients to know who else received the email, such as newsletters sent by small businesses to their customers (although you should probably look into email marketing services for something like this).
So if this type of feature is important to you, here’s how to use BCC in Outlook for Mac.

How to Add a BCC Field to Emails in Outlook for Mac

Add BCC to Outlook for Mac Email Message

Launch Outlook for Mac and click the New Email button under the Home tab at the top-left of Outlook’s window.

When the new email window appears, select the Options tab at the top of the window.

Click the BCC icon in the toolbar. A grey background indicates it’s been turned on.

You’ll see the new BCC field appear in your composing window alongside To and CC.
Finally, add any desired email addresses to the BCC field. When the email is sent, they’ll receive it but their email addresses won’t be shown to any other recipients.

Two things of note: First of all, this BCC toggle will remain on until you decide to turn it off by reversing the steps above, so all future messages you compose will have this option enabled. Secondly, a lot of folks are under the impression that you have to put an address in the “To” field to be able to use the “BCC” one, and that’s not true. If you want, you can put everyone you’re sending to within the blind carbon copy field, and the message will deliver just fine.
Just, you know…be sure to use this power for good, not evil. If you’re sending to a list of a hundred people or something, especially if your email is for business purposes instead of personal ones, don’t abuse the privilege when you use BCC in Outlook. If that’s what you’re doing, it’s better to use a bulk email service to provide recipients with an easy way to opt out of your messages!