This article explains how to view the Bcc recipients of emails you sent using the Mail application on Macs running macOS Catalina (10.15) through OS X Lion (10.7).

What to Know

  • Open the message you sent with Bcc recipients, then select & 2 more to view the recipients.To manually add or remove the Bcc field, open a new message > Select down-arrow> Bcc Address Field.

How to View the Bcc Recipients of Your Sent Emails

When you send somebody a Bcc of an email using the Mail application on a Mac, that recipient’s name and address don’t appear in the email, so other recipients don’t see who else received the message. This is the point of Bcc—to protect the recipients’ privacy.

At some later point, however, you might want to view the names of all the people to whom you sent that email. To find out who you sent a Bcc of a Mail message to:

  • Launch the Mail app.
  • In the Mailboxes panel, select Sent folder.
  • Open the message you sent with Bcc recipients.
  • Next to the recipient in the To line is Bcc, followed by an ampersand and the number of additional recipients. If there were two additional recipients of the original email, it reads & 2 more, for example.
  • Click the & 2 more link to expand the field and see the other recipients.

How to Add Bcc Field to Your Outgoing Emails

If you send emails that include Bcc recipients frequently, you can add the Bcc field to the header of each new email you send automatically.

Launch the Mail app.

In the Mailboxes panel, select Sent folder.

Open the message you sent with Bcc recipients.

Next to the recipient in the To line is Bcc, followed by an ampersand and the number of additional recipients. If there were two additional recipients of the original email, it reads & 2 more, for example.

Click the & 2 more link to expand the field and see the other recipients.

There is no way to see the names of people who were Bcc’d in mail you receive from other senders, only in mail you send.

To always have a Bcc field in Mac Mail:

  • Select Mail > Preferences from the menu bar in Mail.
  • Go to the Viewing tab.
  • Next to Show message headers, select Custom in the drop-down menu.
  • Click the + button.
  • Type Bcc and select OK.
  • Close the Viewing window.

Each new email message you begin now contains the Bcc field in addition to the usual To, Subject, and From fields.

Select Mail > Preferences from the menu bar in Mail.

Go to the Viewing tab.

Next to Show message headers, select Custom in the drop-down menu.

Click the + button.

Type Bcc and select OK.

Close the Viewing window.

How to Manually Add or Remove the Bcc Field

If you prefer to add the Bcc field on the fly only when you need it or remove it when you don’t:

  • Open a new outgoing message in the Mail app.
  • Select the down-arrow at the top of the message.
  • Click Bcc Address Field in the drop-down menu to toggle the header on or off.

Open a new outgoing message in the Mail app.

Select the down-arrow at the top of the message.

Click Bcc Address Field in the drop-down menu to toggle the header on or off.

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