Hiding addresses when emailing to a group in Mail

[pendlewitch]

Hello everyone,

Here's an odd one I would like some help with.

I've just started using the Group email function in Mail and am using iCloud for email at the moment.

I create a Group from some contacts and in Mail Preferences/Composing have unchecked the box "When sending to a group,show all member addresses"..this in theory should hide the addresses for each contact something which I need to do for sound commercial reasons.

I create the mail, choose the group in the 'To' header in Mail and click Send.

When I view the email as a sent item on my Mac it lists all the individual addresses, when external recipients' servers bounced a couple of them back to me due to invalid email addresses the undeliverable emails listed all the contact addresses that I sent it to.

I've just sent a test email to few email addresses I use as a test group and when I opened it up on my iPhone....yep all the addresses are showing.

So...is it just a logical occurrence within Mac OS and associated devices and so I've no need to worry because the recipient will still not see the other addresses, or is there a setting that I've missed, for example in iCloud....or...does it just not work ?

I'm on Mavericks if that helps, thank your for looking.

 

[Slydude]

I'm not sure about this yet. I haven't used this feature in quite a while. The first thought that occurred to me is have you checked with members of the test group to see if they can in fact see addresses of the other recipients?

 

[pendlewitch]

I'm not sure about this yet. I haven't used this feature in quite a while. The first thought that occurred to me is have you checked with members of the test group to see if they can in fact see addresses of the other recipients?

Hello Slydude, thanks for coming back to me. I sent a mail to a test group earlier. One of the recipients has an iPhone and uses the iOS Mail with a Hotmail account and the mail shows individual names in the 'To' list and a blued option called "more" which reveals the actual email addresses.

It's quite worrying if that is the case. What I would like to see is something like "Undisclosed recipients".

 

[S.SubZero]

Send to yourself. BCC the group.

 

[pendlewitch]

Send to yourself. BCC the group.

Interesting. If that's a workaround what will the blind copied recipients see in the address lines ?

EDIT According to my test just their own address ?

 

[Slydude]

If I am reading Apple's directions correctly your method should have worked.

Enter recipients’ email addresses in the Bcc field, and enter your own address in the To field.
Addresses in the Bcc field are not shown when a recipient views the message.

To hide addresses when using a group address, choose Mail > Preferences, click Composing, and then deselect the “When sending to a group, show all member addresses” checkbox.
Recipients will see “Undisclosed-recipients” in the To field of the messages they receive.

Mail (Mountain Lion): Address messages

Maybe this will get the job done. Elsewhere on the site I am lead to believe that one must first create an address card in Contacts with the entry "undisclosed Recipients".
How to Send an Email to Undisclosed Recipients in Mac OS X Mail Step by Step Screenshot Walkthrough - About Email

 

[pendlewitch]

Hi,

Yes Sly I'd studied the first link already and the unchecking method clearly doesn't work as an individual option. The second seems to prompt you to set up an undisclosed recipients address in contacts which I'm assuming is your own before BCC'ing the recipients.

I just tried another method I found which prompts you to leave the 'To' field clear and BCC the grouped contacts before sending.

The mail opens reading 'From' as yourself and 'Undisclosed recipients' in the 'To' field.

How confusing is that!!! A thumbs down in my opinion.

Thank you both.

 

[MBP17•David]

The mail opens reading 'From' as yourself and 'Undisclosed recipients' in the 'To' field.

How confusing is that!!! A thumbs down in my opinion.

That's how it worked for the last 22 years (don't remember sending emails to more than one recipient prior to ~1992 ) in Windows, OS/2, Solaris, BSD, [other] Unix, Linux, OS X ...

Multiple recipients ALWAYS go to BCC. Common courtesy

 

[pendlewitch]

That's how it worked for the last 22 years (don't remember sending emails to more than one recipient prior to ~1992 ) in Windows, OS/2, Solaris, BSD, [other] Unix, Linux, OS X ...

Multiple recipients ALWAYS go to BCC. Common courtesy

You seem to have cherry picked a quote from my post.....I already had the answers from the other guys, and a bit of research led to several solutions to the issue and some conflicting advice from Apple.

I've never had to use such a facility until now and the Mail preferences are half-cocked in my opinion.

I'm really not interested in grandstanding for the sake of it...and your smirk isn't really appropriate here.

 

[Slydude]

I've never had to use such a facility until now and the Mail preferences are half-cocked in my opinion.

There are folks on the Apple forum who would agree with you. Apparently unchecking the box you mentioned used to behave as you expected. The big argument seems to be whether the current behavior is in line with the way e-mail clients behave.

The whole process seems counter intuitive to me. With the wording of that check box it seems like that should be sufficient to leave the addresses undisclosed.

 

[MBP17•David]

I simply commented on the fact that this is nothing new, nor specific to Mail.

The offending smirk will be punished severely, although it referred to the fact that, in 1992 not many people had email addresses.

 

[pendlewitch]

There are folks on the Apple forum who would agree with you. Apparently unchecking the box you mentioned used to behave as you expected. The big argument seems to be whether the current behavior is in line with the way e-mail clients behave.

The whole process seems counter intuitive to me. With the wording of that check box it seems like that should be sufficient to leave the addresses undisclosed.

Thank you Sly it did appear counter intuitive.

Also the Apple Support advice in the link you provided in the paragraph entitled 'Hide recipients’ addresses' specifically indicates that "You can use one of the following methods" and then lists 2 methods...firstly that you can place recipients' addresses in the BCC field and your own in the To field and secondly that you can uncheck the “When sending to a group, show all member addresses” box.

My gut feel is that you actually need to do both if you are using a group and not either or....just doing it from the second option does not work at all.

 

[pendlewitch]

I simply commented on the fact that this is nothing new, nor specific to Mail.

The offending smirk will be punished severely, although it referred to the fact that, in 1992 not many people had email addresses.

David, if you revisit my OP I'm specifically concerned with the Composition instructions in Mail Preferences concerning the showing of member addresses when sending mail to a group and subsequently the relevant Apple Support advice.

 

[MBP17•David]

I can see how this

can be confusing to someone, who never used Bcc, however I have always interpreted this option as:

1. If I have a group, created in my contacts, and
2. Am sending an email to that entire group, then
3. This option will let me see each individual address, as opposed to a group name

I'd never expect this to have any effect, if there are no groups (which I don't have - I only have about 780 contacts and know exactly who they are, so no need to group them); nor would I expect an internal Mail setting to change behaviour of destination mail server, or recipient's email program: anything in To or Cc is always displayed; anything in Bcc is always hidden (apart from the sender, naturally).

 

[chas_m]

I have also always interpreted that preference the way David does (it lets me check to see if there are any obvious bad/expired/etc email addresses), but I too can understand the confusion. BCC is a bit of a dying form, alongside email -- people seem to use other services to handle *routine* mass mailings these days, like MailChimp etc.

I still do some very occasional group emails (birthday parties, that sort of thing) where I need to notify 50+ people of something. I find that my ISP doesn't allow me to send more to more than 60 or so people at a time anyway, so I have "groups" in my Contacts called "friends A-J," "K-P" and "Q-Z". I send the message three times, BCCing each group in turn. Works for my limited needs.

 

[pendlewitch]

Chas,

I was thinking the same last night and agree that BCC is a dying form. In my days working for larger companies the Blind Carbon Copy was something that managers used to keep the CEO's discreetly informed when they were dealing with difficult situations. It's something I've never used on principle in that respect.

The problem I have with it is that the 'relevant' Mail Preference is vague and open to different interpretation by the uninitiated, and that the issue is compounded by Apple Support's apparently incorrect advice.

I'm using groups because I need to split my customers up by category and geographical territory to facilitate an efficient territory call plan. MailChimp looks interesting..particularly the free 'Entrepreneur' plan...thanks for the tip.

 

[JoyRobert]

late find out

Hello everyone,

Here's an odd one I would like some help with.

I've just started using the Group email function in Mail and am using iCloud for email at the moment.

I create a Group from some contacts and in Mail Preferences/Composing have unchecked the box "When sending to a group,show all member addresses"..this in theory should hide the addresses for each contact something which I need to do for sound commercial reasons.

I create the mail, choose the group in the 'To' header in Mail and click Send.

When I view the email as a sent item on my Mac it lists all the individual addresses, when external recipients' servers bounced a couple of them back to me due to invalid email addresses the undeliverable emails listed all the contact addresses that I sent it to.

I've just sent a test email to few email addresses I use as a test group and when I opened it up on my iPhone....yep all the addresses are showing.

So...is it just a logical occurrence within Mac OS and associated devices and so I've no need to worry because the recipient will still not see the other addresses, or is there a setting that I've missed, for example in iCloud....or...does it just not work ?

I'm on Mavericks if that helps, thank your for looking.

hi
i know it's a bit too late. but surprisingly i couldn't find out how to send group an email like a newsletter. and after an hour experiments, i found out how !
here's the trick:
send all addresses in bcc. leave the main recipient empty

so when you receive the mail, you think you're the only one who gets it
and my main reason to use this dying form, was because i was trying to send newsletters without paying some $600