Outlook is an extremely powerful tool, however, it is only as powerful as the user. Many of the features are hidden in Outlook and are just waiting to be found and used. Lets take a look at the BCC and From fields to discover these two hidden gems.
The BCC field allows you to send a blind carbon copy to recipients, thereby hiding their existence on the email. By nature, BCC recipients are not visible to any other recipients on the email. This field works great when you need to email multiple people and do not want the reply all button to be used. Since all BCC recipients are hidden, a reply all only goes to the sender and recipients in the regular to field.
The From field is generally overlooked, but is also an extremely useful tool. The From field allows you to send emails from a different account your Outlook profile has access to. Note the phrase “has access to;” the From field does not give you a free pass to send from any email account in the world.
Enabling the BCC & From Fields
Luckily, the fields are very easy to enable, however, they are also very easy to miss. The quickest way to enable the two fields is to open a New Email window and click on the Options tab, in the top menu header. From the Options menu click on the BCC and From boxes, pictured below, to enable the features. Once enabled, both fields will appear in the New Email editor window and will appear in all subsequent email drafts until disabled.
Note that emails you have permission to send from do not auto populate the from field. You must type in the full email address you wish to send from the first time. After sending your first email, Outlook will remember the contact for future use.
Permission Issues
Permission issues can happen when using the from field; however, because permissions are checked on the email server and not by Outlook, they do not arise until you hit send. If you get an error message, like the one pictured above, you will need your Network Administrator to give you permission to send from the account.