Gmail, the most preferred email service for both personal and business users has been in the market for more than a decade. Just like any other email service provider, Gmail also gives you both CC and BCC options. Usually the ‘To’ field lists the primary recipients of the email, ‘CC’ the secondary list and ‘BCC’ for tertiary list.
What is CC and BCC in Gmail?
When you click on the ‘Compose’ button in your Gmail inbox you will not be able to see the text boxes for CC and BCC, rather Gmail gives two links as ‘Add CC’ and ‘Add BCC’. You can click one or both to get the desired option.
CC (Carbon Copy): As the name, this field lets you send a copy of the email to somebody. Some people say it ‘courtesy copy’ which totally describe what is the meaning of this field. The ‘To’ field indicates the main list of recipients. With this if you want to send a copy to, you can make use of this field.
BCC (Blind Carbon Copy): This is almost the same as CC, means sending a copy to someone or a list of people. The only difference between CC and BCC is that in BCC recipients do not have any idea of each other. The recipient will know that he/she was in BCC field but the other names in the list will be discrete.
To vs. CC vs. BCC
To field is generally used to send the mails to main recipients of the mail and as cc name suggest used to send the copy of the mails. Like you are only informing them about the mail, but the cc’d person can see the main recipients and Bcc’d person also. BCC field is used to send the mail secretly to some one, Bcc’d person will not able to see any of the main recipient or cc’d recipients.
In the above example(screenshot) the mail is sent to Ranjan(In To Field), Praveen(In CC field) and Ashish(In BCC field). Mail will be delivered to all three persons, but here Ranjan is the main recipient and Praveen is the cc’d person, so he can see the recipient list including To and BCC field. Ashish will recieve the mail but he cannot see any recipient (not To nor CC’d person).
How to use CC and BCC in Gmail effectively
If you are using these fields frequently and wants to use these effectively there are some tips. You will tire if you have to send mails to the same set of people and each time you have type those IDs. Do not worry Google gives solution for that too. You can create a group in Gmail’s Contacts section.
