Emails are a plague for so many people, it’s a wonder that not more attention is spent on improving email practices. We’d all benefit from a better email hygiene. One rather underused (and/or misused) tool is the BCC. I thought I’d share a little manoeuvre that I have seen practiced by a few people, and that I really like, called the “moving to BCC.”
Moving so and so to BCC
Moving to BCC: There is something absolutely charming in its transparency and efficiency. The most obvious case for using this manoeuvre is when someone, who has put two people in touch with one another, no longer needs to be part of the ongoing conversation. One of the receiving parties then suavely moves the networker out of the conversation, writing “moving networker to BCC.”
Improving email hygiene
But, this isn’t the only time to use such an expression. As email threads and discussions continue on with an all too lazy REPLY ALL, would it not be appropriate to scrape off the unnecessary parties and do a “moving to BCC”? The concept is to copy/paste the folks in CC who are no longer needed and move them in BCC; then, to refer in the body of the email, “moving all other parties into BCC”…
Of course, it takes some practice and mistakes are bound to occur — if only for some offended egos.
Yet, I wonder just how many unwanted emails we could eliminated by implementing such a protocol? We need to find ways to improve our email hygiene. Is the moving the BCC something that suits you?
If you want further convincing, try this post by Jack Newton in Slaw.ca
Your thoughts are welcome.
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I have when people move a large distribution group to BCC. People are subscribed to several distribution groups and don’t read them usually. When somebody use the ‘Move to BCC’ feature you always receive email from them to your primary folder that you don’t even want to see…
I have when people move a large distribution group to BCC. People are subscribed to several distribution groups and don’t read them usually. When somebody use the ‘Move to BCC’ feature you always receive email from them to your primary folder that you don’t even want to see…
I hate when people move a large distribution group to BCC. People are subscribed to several distribution groups and don’t read them usually. When somebody use the ‘Move to BCC’ feature you always receive email from them to your primary folder that you don’t even want to see…
I hate when people move a large distribution group to BCC. People are subscribed to several distribution groups and don’t read them usually. When somebody use the ‘Move to BCC’ feature you always receive email from them to your primary folder that you don’t even want to see…
I find BCC very frightening – you BCC people in on a message and they hit “Reply All” and others go “How did he know about this message?” thereby dumping you in it. So I have a script. If I add people to the BCC field, running this script removes them from the message, sends the message to the to: and cc: candidates and then copies the message to each of those who’d been BBC’d with an added “I though that you should know that I have just sent this message to .” If they then hit reply or even reply-all then only I get their response…
I’d share the script but I have a particularly geeky email setup so it probably wouldn’t work for others so I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
I must be an idiot because I don’t understand this trick. Do you in fact move the networker to the bcc field of the emails going forward? If so, how does that make the slightest difference to the volume of their inbox? Or is “Moving to bcc” a euphemism for dropping someone off altogether?
Thanks for the clarification.
Hi @Crystal, sorry for the ridiculously slow reply…. but just in case: The benefit is that the networker is knowingly dropped from the ongoing discussion. As a courtesy, I always think it’s sensible to go back to the original networker to let them know the outcome!
Move to BCC is also done by people against which you have done some escalation. They move everyone to BCC to stop the further escalation.
@Harpeet, you mean as a defensive way to stop the escalation?