Outlook Mass Email Question

LaOs

Hey, I'm at work and my boss is wondering if there is any way she can do a certain thing with her mass emails.


There's a group of clients she wants to email but she does not want individuals clients to be able to see who the other clients are. She was specifically wondering if there is any way to have everyone in the BCC but at the same time have the specific client's email address appear in the TO when they get their mail.

What I mean is, my boss sends an email to myself, Vinny, ABC Group, and her puppy. She wants it so that when I open my email it looks like it came only to me. My name is in the TO and everyone else does not appear at all (so I wouldn't even know they got the mail). Obviously, then, they would be in the BCC. But, when Vinny opens his email, his name is now in the TO field and mine is hidden in the BCC with everyone else.

Now, I told her a way to get the same effect (send mass emails where individuals cannot see who else is receiving that mail) which was just creating a giant mailing group. Individuals cannot see who else is in the group, just that it was sent to a group, so it works the same.

I just thought I'd ask to see if what she originally wanted to do is possible. I don't think it is, but it's really slow at work so I popped over to ask. Thanks guys!

Lewisham

No, it's not possible. The email program parses the message, the stuff in the To: header appears in the To:, the stuff in the BCC header doesn't appear, but the email magically arrives at it's destination. You can't ask the email program to then spoof the To: email address.

Why does it matter so much? No-one really cares. Just send it to something like "[Company name] Mailing List" with the email address as your boss again, and stuff everything else in the BCC.

Orogogus

I haven't done a Microsoft Word mail merge in years, but I think that would do what she's asking for. If memory serves, though, it means that she'd have an email in her sentbox for every recipient, instead of just one for all of them.

You basically create a form letter with spaces for the fields, and it can fill in fields such as the name, address, etc. based on a second file -- I think I had my appropriate contact information in an Excel spreadsheet. Then when the form letter looks okay, you tell it to merge it together with the contact information and create all the emails.

As I said, I haven't done this in about a decade, so it would probably be best to look up mail merge (as it relates to email) in Word's help, or on the Internet, and see if it suits your needs.

LaOs

Yeah, I told her that she could create a group for the mailing list which does exactly what she wants (which is what she went with) or she could make a separate email for each individual.

Thanks for the help.

blincoln

You could also use a mass-mailing program instead of Outlook. That would do what you want.