Sending to College-Wide Distribution Groups​

ITS has implemented an email rule to ensure emails sent to large groups (Faculty, Staff, or Students) use the Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc) address line to prevent “reply all” scenarios and disclosure of individual email addresses. If an authorized sender sends an email with Faculty Staff, or Students in the To: or Cc: address line, their message will be blocked by the Office 365 email system. An error message will be sent to the sender notifying them that their email could not be sent.  The error messages sent to the sender will include one of the following messages:  

• To send email to the Faculty, Staff, or Students groups, please resend by entering addresses in Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc) line.  

• To copy the Faculty, Staff, or Students groups, please resend by entering the addresses in the Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc) line.   

Simply, resend your email using the Bcc: line if you receive an error due to including Faculty, Staff, or Students in the To: or Cc: address line. 

If you do not see the Bcc line, please choose it from your Outlook options toolbar in either the Outlook Desktop Application or Outlook Web (OWA) as demonstrated in the two screenshots below. 

Calendar and Forced Email Groups 

When you add participants to the “Required” or “Optional” section, they can see each other’s mail addresses which is not ideal for data protection when sending to large groups. Your calendar invite will be blocked in the same manner as an email to Faculty, Staff or Students. 

How to hide participants in the Outlook 365 Desktop Client 

The bcc: option is missing currently in the Outlook 365 application. A work around is to add people to the “Resources” option. 

1. Create a new meeting request. 

2.  In the meeting options select, the Required or Optional button.

   

3. In the Resources option, add the contacts or mail addresses of the participants.

   

4. Then, add the required information to the invite, including online meeting options (Zoom, Teams) and send the mail. 

OWA and Forced Email Groups 

1. Open Outlook for the web in a web browser. Click the Calendar  icon . 

2. Click new event invitation. 

3. Compose or update your invite as normal. 

4. In the meeting toolbar, click Response options, then click Hide attendee list. (This feature is currently only available in Outlook for the web.) 

5. Click Send to send the meeting invitation with the attendees hidden. 

Microsoft Reference for Outlook for Windows and Mac