What is cc and bb in gmail?

Gmail’s CC and BCC features can help you send emails to multiple recipients. However, the approach that each one uses is slightly different.

Don’t worry.

In this article, I’ll show you how to use each of those Gmail features correctly.

However, the CC and BCC features also have several limitations. That’s why I’ll also demonstrate how to use mail merge tools to make the process far easier!

Also check out how to use BCC email including a better way to send emails to multiple recipients in my guide to using BCC.

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Let’s go.

The CC (carbon copy) field allows you to send a copy of your email to multiple recipients.

The term “carbon copying” comes from the carbon paper you use to make copies of documents — the email service makes copies of your email and sends it to CC’d recipients.

The difference between the CC and To field lies in email etiquette.

The To field is used for primary recipients — people required to act in response to your mail. On the other hand, the CC feature applies to secondary recipients — people who need to be in the loop about the conversation and, ideally, aren’t supposed to take any action.

The correct usage of To and CC fields usually defines who needs to take action and who simply needs the information.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on using the CC field to send mail to multiple recipient lists in Gmail. I’ll explain the steps when using:

Step 1 Log in to your Gmail account and click the Compose button to open up the Gmail compose window.

Step 2 In the To address box, type your primary recipient’s email address. You can separate multiple addresses using a comma, space or by pressing the enter key.

To send a copy of your mail to secondary recipients, you must add each one as a CC recipient.

Click the CC button, as shown below.

Step 3 Enter the email address of recipients who’ll receive a copy of the email in the CC field.

Step 4 Compose your new message and hit Send when your message is complete. All your recipients (primary + CC’d) will receive the email.

Let’s see how it looks at a recipient’s end.

All recipient addresses in the To and CC fields are visible to everyone in the email.

Note: While I’ve used Android screenshots, the process highlighted here is the same for both Android and iOS devices.

Step 1 Open the Gmail app on your Android or iOS device and click on Compose to write your new message.

Step 2 In the To field of the new email, type your primary recipient’s email address. You can separate multiple addresses using a comma or space.

To add a CC recipient, click on the downward arrow on the top right corner in the To address box, as shown below. This will display the CC and BCC fields.

Step 3 In the CC field, enter the mail addresses of the recipients who’ll receive a copy of the email.

Step 4 Compose your message and hit Send. Both your primary recipient and the CC’d person will receive the email.

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Let’s now look at some issues of using Gmail’s CC method.

Some of the problems linked with CC’ing recipients in Gmail are:

The recipients in Gmail’s CC list are not hidden from each other. This is fine when you’re sending an email to a group of people who know each other.

However, when you email a group where people don’t know the other parties, using the CC feature is a breach of privacy.

Think about it: If you’re sending marketing or sales emails, would you think of giving away your mailing list?

Because that’s what you’re doing by using the To/CC field in Gmail!

To protect the identity of your recipients, never use the CC field to communicate confidential information.

Do you need to email dozens or even hundreds of recipients at a time?

Manually adding each recipient to the CC line would be a painstaking and error-prone process. You could misspell an email address, leave someone out, or mistakenly add someone as To. The list goes on.

A significant problem with using the CC line in Gmail is that any CC’d person could mistakenly click “Reply All” instead of the “Reply” button while responding to your mail.

An unintentional “Reply All” broadcasts their response to every address involved in the communication (including the CC list), resulting in a potentially embarrassing situation.

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Now that we’ve covered how to CC in Gmail, let’s explore how to BCC in Gmail since it can solve the first limitation to an extent.

The BCC (blind carbon copy) field allows you to send an email to a multiple recipient list.

Each address in the BCC field is known as a tertiary recipient.

When using the BCC option, the main recipient of the mail will be unaware of other recipients you’ve included. As a result, a BCC email is a little more confidential than CC.

While your BCC recipient can’t see who else has been added, they’ll know that they were added to the BCC line and weren’t the only ones being addressed.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on using the BCC line for sending an email to undisclosed recipients in the Gmail email client. (The process is the same for your mobile Gmail app.)

Use the same first steps as in How to CC in Gmail.

Except, this time, click on add BCC instead of CC.

Enter the tertiary recipient you’d like hidden in the BCC address field.

Then, compose the message and send it.

On the recipient side, it will look something like this:

The main recipient of your email can’t see who else has been added. However, each BCC recipient will know that they’ve been BCC’d to this mail.

For more information on using BCC in Gmail, read my ultimate guide.

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Let’s now look at some potential issues of using BCC in Gmail.

The three major problems with using the BCC field in Gmail include:

Because your recipients in the BCC address field know instinctively they aren’t the only ones added to this mail, it could raise questions or suspicion. That’s why you should never use the BCC feature for formal conversations, as it could lead to distrust among your team members.

Gmail’s BCC or CC feature doesn’t allow you to personalize emails.

This means that your recipients receive an email without their name being mentioned. This is enough for many people to mark your email as spam or just delete it.

Moreover, this makes it an impractical method to send pitches and marketing emails.

Why? As you can’t mention a person’s name and customize their sales message, your BCC list recipient will receive a bland, generic marketing email that disappoints them. You won’t be able to address their concerns and make a personal connection to boost your conversions.

Gmail doesn’t give you any stats or analytics from your BCC or CC emails.

While this might not be an issue for personal communication, it’s a significant problem if you want to track how many people opened or clicked on your sales message.

However, Gmail doesn’t give the sender any features to analyze data — such as when the email was opened or what links were clicked, etc.

These statistics indicate how well your emails are being received, so can you really operate efficiently without them?

Moreover, these stats are helpful not only for email marketers and salespeople but also for anyone who regularly sends mass emails to a group.

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Fortunately, you can easily overcome the problems associated with Gmail’s CC and BCC features by using an email marketing tool like GMass.

GMass is a powerful email marketing software that allows users to run email campaigns from their Gmail inbox. Its powerful mail merge features have made it a popular Chrome extension for employees from top companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn.

Individuals, schools, social clubs, and churches can also use GMass to send emails from their Google account to a target audience.

It’s super easy to send emails to multiple recipients in Gmail using the GMass extension.

Here’s how to do it:

You’re done! Now you can send emails to multiple recipients within seconds!

Did you notice the {FirstName} field in the screenshot? This personalization feature allows you to address each recipient in your distribution list by their own name. You will never need to say a generic “Hi” again in your bulk emails.

And instead of manually adding each recipient from your distribution list, you can use one of these three easy ways:

And with GMass, if you want to use CC and BCC, you can — and you can personalize them for every recipient. Check out our guide to mail merge CC and BCC to see how you can include different CC and/or BCC addresses for everyone on your email list.

Here are the top seven reasons to use GMass to send your emails:

To enjoy such unique advantages of GMass, just download the Chrome extension and sign up using your Gmail account.

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Mailing to multiple recipients doesn’t have to be a tiring and complicated process.

While Gmail’s CC or BCC field can help, using a mail merge app like GMass is a far better solution. It has tons of features to get the best out of your email campaigns and maximize your conversions for all future emails.

Why not download the GMass Chrome web extension right now and experience it for yourself?

When sending an email on Gmail, you have three options: to, cc, and bcc. Each of these options has a different function, and offers you a different level of privacy. You can use them in any combination you like on any email.

Here's what you need to know about each option, and how to use them in either the desktop or mobile versions of Gmail.

Bcc, or "blind carbon copy," lets you add multiple recipients to an email — in other words, lets you send an email to multiple people at once.

However, when they receive the email, none of these Bcc recipients will know who else received the email via Bcc. They'll still see who sent it, and they'll see people who received the email via "To" or "Cc."

Bcc is useful if you're sending an email to many people, and you don't want recipients to see the full list of people receiving the email. If you're sending emails on a big mailing list, using Bcc is a great way to keep everyone's email private.

1. Begin composing an email by clicking the "+ Compose" button in the top-right.

2. Click "Recipients" at the top of the email box, and then click "Bcc" on the right side.

3. Enter the email addresses you want to Bcc to.

4. Type out your email, adding any links and attachments.

5. Click "Send" to send the email to all your recipients.

1. In the Gmail app, tap the "+" button to compose an email (located at the bottom-right of the screen).

2. Tap the arrow pointing down in the address line to reveal additional options (Cc and Bcc).

3. Tap the "Bcc" address field and enter all the email addresses you want to Bcc to.

4. Type out your email, adding any links and attachments.

5. Tap the paper airplane icon to send the email (located at the top-right of the screen).

Emails sent to addresses listed in the "To" section of an email are sent directly to the recipients, and recipients will see everyone else who received the email. In Gmail, the "To" address field is the one you fill out by default.

For emails you're sending to just one person, enter their address in the "To" field. For emails you're sending to more than one person, you can enter all addresses in the "To" field, or opt to Cc or Bcc some recipients.

1. Click the "+ Compose" button to compose an email (located on the top-left of the page).

2. Click the address field and enter email addresses by typing out names or addresses from your address book and clicking on the intended recipient, or by typing an address and hitting your keyboard's Enter or Return key. If you're pasting multiple email addresses in the address field, make sure they are separated by commas.

3. Type out your email, adding any links and attachments.

4. Click "Send" to send your email to the recipients.

1. In the Gmail app, tap the "+" button to compose an email (located at the bottom-right of the screen).

2. Type in the email addresses of the intended recipients.

3. Type out your email, adding any links and attachments.

4. Tap the paper airplane icon to send the email (located at the top-right of the screen).

"Cc," or "carbon copy," adds secondary recipients to an email.

All recipients in the "To" and "Cc" sections can see who the email was sent to, and who else was Cc'ed on the email.

You may choose to cc certain people on an email if they're involved in a project, keeping them in the loop, and send the email "To" a point person that you need a response from.

Another example would be sending a vacation or time off request to a supervisor and Cc'ing HR so that they're aware for their records.

1. Click the "+" button to compose an email (located at the top-left of the page).

2. Click "Cc."

3. Enter the email addresses you want to Cc.

4. Type out your email, adding any links and attachments.

5. Click "Send" to send your email to the recipients.

1. In the Gmail app, tap the "+" button to compose an email (located at the bottom right of the screen).

2. Tap the arrow pointing down in the address line to reveal additional options (Cc and Bcc).

3. Tap the "Cc" address field and enter the email addresses you want to Cc.

4. Type out your email, adding any links and attachments.

5. Tap the paper airplane icon to send the email (located at the top-right of the screen).

CC and BCC are two fields that sit next to or below the “To” field at the top of any new message you compose in your inbox. CC stands for “Carbon Copy” and BCC stands for “Blind Carbon Copy”. All are used to add the email addresses of the people you wish to send your message to.

The CC field in an email stands for Carbon Copy, while the BCC field stands for Blind Carbon Copy. If these terms don’t make any sense with respect to an email, don’t worry. In this article, we’ll explain the context, why you need CC and BCC in email and when to use these fields.

You see, back in the old days when most communication was done on paper. If you had to create a physical copy of a letter, you had to insert something known as a carbon paper between two sheets of paper. Here’s what that would look like.

[Holger.Ellgaard / CC BY-SA]

With this arrangement, anything that you wrote or typed on the top sheet of paper would get imprinted through the carbon paper onto the button sheet of paper. The bottom sheet of the paper would then be known as the “Carbon Copy” of the original.

As the communication slowly changed from paper over to email over the years, there was a need to send a “carbon copy” of an email to someone. That’s how the CC field was born.

In effect, the CC field in an email allows the sender to send a “carbon copy” of the email to someone apart from the recipient in the To: field of the email. The CC field in email lets you keep recipients in the loop.

For example, let’s say you are sending an email to a prospective client with the project quote. You want to send a copy of your email to your manager, so that he is kept in the loop. In this case, you will enter the prospective client’s email address in the To: field and your manager’s email address in the CC: field.

BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy. Just like how CC works in an email, BCC is used to send a carbon copy of the email to someone. However, unlike CC, there is a major difference in the way BCC works.

When you CC an email to someone, the recipients in both the To field and the CC field are able to see the email addresses of each other. In the above example, the prospective client can see that your manager has been CC’d in the email. To avoid this, i.e. if you want to keep the carbon copy recipients private, you need to use the BCC field.

All email addresses that are mentioned in the BCC field are kept hidden, so recipients in the TO and CC field are unable to see them.

From a technical point of view, the CC field works exactly like the TO field in email. That is, it makes no difference whether you include an email address in the TO field or in the CC field — the email is delivered to the recipients and each of them can view the other’s email address. So why do you need the CC field?

It really just boils down to email etiquette. When composing the email, the TO field is for those recipients who the email is directly intended for. On the other hand, the CC field is for those recipients who are receiving the email as a courtesy or so that they are kept in the loop.

Generally speaking, if you receive an email where you’re mentioned in the CC field, no action is expected from you.

The BCC field is very unlike the CC field, and actually has a bunch of use cases. As the email addresses mentioned in the BCC field stay private and hidden, here are some examples where you can use BCC to your own advantage.

The CC field allows you to send a copy of the email with any recipient of your choice. In most cases, the CC field is used to keep someone in the loop, or to share the same email with them. Unfortunately, this creates a literal copy of the same email in the recipient’s inbox. Imagine the state of your manager’s inbox if you were to CC him onto every outgoing email that you send. This is a quick-fire way to clutter your inbox.

Not just that, CC’d emails also take up unnecessary storage space in the email account. If the email has attachments, copies of those attachments are created and delivered to every recipient mentioned in the TO and CC fields. Imagine how much storage space is wasted this way.

Lastly, if you use an email service that charges per email sent (such as Amazon’s SES), you are wasting a credit for every recipient mentioned in the CC field. So what are the alternatives to CC in email?

• To the right of the “To” field in a New Message window in Gmail, click the “CC BCC” button (or, on mobile, the down arrow).
• CC and BCC fields will appear below the “To” field. Enter the recipients you want in each field as necessary.
• After composing your email, hit “Send.”