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E-Mails: What does TO, CC and BCC mean and what is the difference?

Info by Collin McNeil | Last update on 2022-12-27 | Created on 2012-02-27

In almost all programs and web interfaces for sending e-mails a distinction is made between the fields TO, CC and BBC to enter the recipient email. But what do these abbreviations stand for and what is the difference between TO, CC and BCC?

TO

The TO field is used when the e-mail has only one recipient. In this case, you can leave the other fields blank and you can write only the one recipient in the TO field. Does the e-mail has multiple recipients, there are several possibilities: either you can write all recipients with a comma (or semicolon) separately in the TO field or you can make a distinction: The principal recipient or the highest-ranking receiver comes in the TO field and the other recipients in the CC field.

CC (or copy)

The abbreviation CC stands for Carbon Copy. Carbon Copy is the term for the previously used punch with carbon paper from a time when there were no photocopiers and copies had been produced in this way. In the CC field now, all recipients are written, that should receive a "copy" of the email. In general, there is a distinction between TO and CC made in the way, that if all recipients are equal, all of them are written in the TO field. But if an email is addressed to a person (main receiver) and some others should only be informed about that mail or about the information in this mail, they are simply written as "followers" in the CC field instead of addressing them directly via the TO field.

BCC (or blind copy)

The third and final field is BCC or blind carbon copy. While all recipients of an e-mail can read all addresses in the TO and CC fields, the receivers written in the BCC field remain secret for the other recipients of the email. Therefore, you should use the TO and CC fields only for recipients knowing each other and their man addresses, so that addresses are not inadvertently passed on to third parties. For sending newsletters or emails to all people from the address book, you should write the addresses in the BCC field, so that the list of recipients remains invisible for all other recipients.

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