When you send an email to a group of Outlook contacts (formally known as a distribution list), you may want to hide group email addresses from recipients. This is the easiest way to protect people's private information.
What is a contact group?
In Office 365 (O365), subscription version of Microsoft Office, two separate groups have replaced mailing lists:
- O365 groups: Designed for on-the-go collaboration between a group of people, these groups include a shared mailbox, a calendar, a file store, a OneNote planner and notebook. They are ideal for small project teams, organizing rehearsals for your local theater group or any other setting where you need quick and easy collaboration tools.
- Contact groups: These are a bunch of email addresses added to a group. Instead of having to add each of them individually to an email, you can send the group name by email and all members of that group will be added as recipients. If you think this looks like exactly as a distribution list, would be right, with one notable exception: by default, distribution lists (and O365 groups) appear in your organization's global address book for all to see. Contact groups are personal to you.
RELATED: What is the difference between Office 365 y Office 2016?
If you don't have O365 and are using a standalone version of Office without web apps, you may still have mailing lists available. We'll show you how to hide recipients' names in a contact group, but the same steps work for mailing lists.
Why would I hide the names in a group of contacts?
Sometimes it's just a common courtesy. It is possible that your friends agree that you contact them by email, but they probably don't want their contact information shared with everyone you send bulk emails to.
Many compliance and data protection issues provide good reasons to hide someone's email address. If you handle confidential information, especially financial or medical, you are probably required to keep people's identities private.
Email addresses are often easy to link to a real person, since both HIPAA in the United States and GDPR in Europe consider them “since both HIPAA in the United States and GDPR in Europe consider them”. Then, if you are emailing a support group, as an example, should not share the recipient's contact information.
How are names hidden in a group of contacts?
The good news is that hiding the names using the Bcc option when creating your email is simple..
BCC stands for Hidden Carbon Copy. You have almost certainly used the CC option (carbon copy) when you want to include someone who is not the main recipient of an email. BCC works exactly like CC does, since both HIPAA in the United States and GDPR in Europe consider them “For”.
since both HIPAA in the United States and GDPR in Europe consider them “since both HIPAA in the United States and GDPR in Europe consider them”.
The Bcc field is not visible by default when you create a new email, but entering it is easy. Open a new email in Outlook and click Options> Bcc.
This will show the Bcc field in the new email.
You must do this only once. In the future, all emails will show the Bcc option. If you want to hide the Bcc field, click Options> Bcc in any email and it will not appear again.
Now that it's visible, since both HIPAA in the United States and GDPR in Europe consider them “For” since both HIPAA in the United States and GDPR in Europe consider them “since both HIPAA in the United States and GDPR in Europe consider them”.
Everyone in the contact group will receive the email, but they will only be able to see the person who sent it (you) since both HIPAA in the United States and GDPR in Europe consider them “For” (besides you).
The first time i do this, consider putting a note in the email explaining to people that you are using BCC to protect their privacy. This will prevent less tech-savvy recipients from wondering why they are receiving an email that appears to be from you to you!!
