General emailing question

[SomeCanadianGuy]

General emailing question

This might sound horrendously dumb, but it's something I never bothered to think about before today.

When using hotmail to send an email, there's "To", "CC" and "BCC". What exactly is the point of the CC and BCC things? I tried using the nifty little help button in Hotmail, but it's Microsoft so there wasn't much help there... Anyone able to inform me about that one?

 

[Starfishied]

CC is for courtesy copy or carbon copy. Usually for people you don't normally have to send to, but you're just being nice. "courtesy" For BCC, it's the same as above, but the email address of the recipients won't show. A good way to send it to 20 different people without them seeing your other recipient's email address.

 

[SomeCanadianGuy]

Uhm... So let's see if I've got this... If I send it CC it's the exact same thing as sending it using "To"? And sending BCC will just hide the email addresses of anyone else I send it to? Is that right? :scratch:

 

[DurfBarian]

Basically, yup. There are some mail clients that won't let you put dozens of addresses in the To: slot, so you have to add the extras in the Cc: clot. In a business setting it's common to use the To: space for the actual recipient of the mail and the Cc: for other people who are not the primary recipient, but who are supposed to get filled in on what's going on.

Bcc: is good for hiding addresses, and also for keeping people from doing stupid "reply to all" tricks when they just need to tell you something in return.

 

[SomeCanadianGuy]

Ok, so that should come in handy considering I have a batch email I have to send to my club execs, but I don't want them knowing that they all got it kind of a thing.

Another question, on a related note then. Student council has an email address set up for. Unfortunately, I cannot access that address from anywhere (and I really mean anywhere). When someone sends mail to it, it automatically forwards to my normal email account where I can then check the email. I'm wondering is there any way to use this in a backwards sort of manner? Because it would be simpler if I could use that "official" address to send stuff from, rather than just receive. Does anyone understand what I'm trying to do? And if you do, any clue as to how to accomplish said task?

 

[DurfBarian]

If you're using a mail client on your computer, as opposed to Hotmail or some other webmail, you can set the return address on mail sent from that client to whatever you want. You tell the program to go get the mail at the proper account name, but you put whatever mail address you prefer in the "reply address" spot. You can set up a second account just for this mail if you want. (Where you adjust this setting is different for each mail program; tell us which one you use and someone can point you to it.)

 

[SomeCanadianGuy]

Durfybaby, you're the best. (Don't tell my girlfriend I said that, she'll have my head on a spike! )

Standard email program on this computer is the everwonderful Outlook Express 6. I know more or less about the extra mail account thing, but I don't know how to get it working or such. Once again, all help is greatly appreciated.

Edit: Oh, sidenote, horrible spam coming through Outlook lately. Any quick way to block some of it?

 

[DurfBarian]

I don't use Outlook anything, but someone here can tell you how to:

* Set up a new account with your student council address as its reply address (if you just make a copy of your current account and change only that setting it will work)
* Set up a filter that takes all incoming mail that was orignally To: your student council address and sticks it in a folder
* Make sure all mail in that folder gets replied to from your new account

EDIT: The best way to avoid spam is to flee the Internet forever. Either that or see if your ISP offers any Bayesian filtering stuff server-side.

 

[Starfishied]

I don't really have advice on how to get rid of spams, but the best way is to have at least 2 separate email accounts. One for your friends and family, and the other one for all the junky sign ups. That way, all the junks will go into one account and important emails will go into another account.

As for Outlook, I don't personally know how to completely block spams, but there's a little wizard (yellow cube right next to the find icon) that might be able to help you out some. Be sure to test it on your old mail to see if it'll auto-sort for you. Don't use the permanently delete option, since you could accidently lose your important email, if the computer is too stupid to identify it.