How to Show BCC in Outlook: Classic, New Outlook, Web, Mac and Mobile

How to show BCC in Outlook: quick reference

The BCC field is hidden in every version of Outlook until you ask for it. Here is where Microsoft currently documents the switch.

Keeping the field visible for every message is a separate question with a different answer on each platform, and it has its own section below.

Which Outlook are you using?

There are two desktop Outlooks for Windows and they do not share a menu structure, so this is worth thirty seconds before you go hunting. The tell is at the top right of the window: Microsoft's migration guide states that "Customers see the Try the new Outlook toggle at the top right of the classic Outlook experience." If the toggle invites you to try the new one, you are in classic.

If you are wondering how long that choice lasts: as of Microsoft's February 2026 update to that page, new Outlook is still in the opt-in stage, administrators get "at least 12 months notice" before the opt-out stage and the same again before cutover, and existing classic installations "will continue to be supported until at least 2029."

How to show BCC in new Outlook for Windows

The new app puts the field one level deeper than the old one, and that extra step is the one people miss.

1. Open a new message, or reply to one
2. On the Options tab, select Show fields
3. Select Show Bcc

The Bcc line appears above the subject. Microsoft's Bcc page for Windows words it as "From Options > Show fields, select Show Bcc," and adds the part that saves you doing it twice: once enabled, the field "appears every time you create a message until it's turned off."

If you cannot see the Options tab, pop the message out into its own window and look again. The inline compose view in the Reading Pane carries a trimmed toolbar.

How to show BCC in classic Outlook for Windows

Classic Outlook has two answers, depending on where your message opened. Microsoft documents both: "If the message you're composing opens in a new window, select Options > Bcc. If the message you're composing opens in the Reading Pane, select Bcc from the ribbon."

In a separate compose window:

1. Select New Email
2. Open the Options tab in the ribbon
3. Select Bcc

Composing in the Reading Pane: the ribbon above the message carries Bcc directly. No Options tab involved.

The toggle sticks. The same page explains that "You can turn off the Bcc box for future messages at any time in classic Outlook for Windows," and that you can read its state off the button: "A dark background means the button is turned on, and a light background means it's turned off." So one click in classic Outlook covers the messages after this one too.

How to show BCC in Outlook on the web

The web client, and by extension anything running at outlook.com or outlook.office.com, does not hide the field behind a menu. It sits on the same row as the recipients.

1. Select New mail
2. On the right side of the To line, select Bcc
3. Add your recipients in the Bcc row

Microsoft's compose documentation is one sentence on this: "To add recipients to the Cc or Bcc lines, select Cc or Bcc on the right side of the To line." The same page confirms the behavior people actually want to hear stated: "The names of people on the Bcc line are hidden from other recipients of the message."

There is no three-dots menu step, whatever older guides say. That path belonged to a compose interface Microsoft has since retired.

How to show BCC in Outlook for Mac

Mac works like the web client rather than like classic Windows, which catches out anyone moving between machines.

1. Create a new message
2. At the end of the To line, select Bcc

Microsoft's Mac page words it exactly that way: "At the end of the To line, select Bcc." Mac is also the platform with the clearest documented default, covered in the next section.

How to show BCC in Outlook for iOS and Android

Microsoft publishes a show-and-hide Bcc page for Windows and one for Mac. It publishes no equivalent page for the mobile apps, and documents no always-show setting for them.

What the apps do is collapse the recipient rows to save screen space, so expanding them brings Cc and Bcc into view and you add addresses in the Bcc row. Treat that as a description rather than a documented click path, and check it against your own app: mobile layouts change between releases, and any guide promising you a Settings > Compose > Show Bcc switch on a phone is describing a screen Microsoft has never documented.

How to make BCC show every time

Nobody wants to click Show Bcc forty times a week. What is available differs by platform more than the quick-reference table can carry.

• New Outlook for Windows, Outlook on the web and Outlook.com: open Settings (the gear, top right) > Mail > Compose and reply, and under Message format turn on Always show Bcc. Microsoft's mail settings reference describes it as "Always show Bcc - Use this to add the Bcc line to all new messages that you create." One caveat on that page: its stated scope is Outlook Web App on Exchange Server 2016 and 2019, so the label may read slightly differently in your tenant. Failing that, the Options > Show fields > Show Bcc toggle already carries over on its own: Microsoft says the field "appears every time you create a message until it's turned off."
• Classic Outlook for Windows: the Options > Bcc toggle persists, which follows from Microsoft's own instructions for switching it off "for future messages." Set it once and forget it.
• Outlook for Mac: open the Outlook menu, select Settings, then Composing, and enable Show BCC field by default.
• iOS and Android: nothing documented.

If your team keeps a permanent BCC on outgoing customer mail so a colleague or an archive address gets a copy, the setting is not the interesting part of that arrangement. Read when to use BCC, and when not to below.

How to see who you BCC'd on a message you sent

This is the question that arrives twenty minutes after the send, usually phrased as "did that actually go to everyone?"

Classic Outlook for Windows: open the message in Sent Items and read the header block. Microsoft's wording: "In the Sent Items folder in classic Outlook, open the message that you sent. In the Reading Pane, view the header section of the message." The Mac page gives the same instruction for Sent Items there. Only you see this. The recipients never do.

When the Bcc field genuinely is not there. There is a documented case where the field vanishes from your own sent copy. Microsoft's article on the Bcc field missing from Sent Items describes the symptom as "you may not see the Bcc field on the item even if you included e-mail addresses in the Bcc field when you originally sent the message." It happens on an Online mode profile combined with a very large Bcc list, and Microsoft's example is a user who hit it at 500 addresses. The two fixes it lists are "Use an Cached mode profile" and "Use a Distribution list instead of a large number of e-mail addresses."

That second suggestion is Microsoft telling you the address list has outgrown the compose window. If the same set of people receives the same mail regularly, a real list object is the correct home for it, and the difference between a distribution list and a shared mailbox decides which one you want.

The same article carries a recovery trick for reading the Bcc list of an already-sent message: open it from Sent Items, choose Other Actions > Resend This Message, read the Bcc field in the new draft, then close it without sending.

Printing that list is not possible. If someone in compliance asks you for a printout showing who was BCC'd, Microsoft's answer is a flat no: "There is no way to print an email message directly within Outlook that shows recipients included in the Bcc (blind carbon copy) field." The documented workaround is a screen capture of the open sent item, printed as an image, and it applies to Outlook for Microsoft 365, 2024, 2021, 2019 and 2016. If a printed BCC list is a recurring requirement in your company, BCC is the wrong mechanism and you want a system that keeps a record on purpose.

What BCC does and what it does not do

BCC is blind carbon copy. Addresses in that field receive the message, and nobody else on it can see that they did. CC, carbon copy, is the opposite: those addresses are visible to everyone.

The mechanism is header stripping. Your mail server takes the full recipient list, removes the Bcc entries from the copy that goes to the To and Cc recipients, and delivers a separate copy to each Bcc address with the field removed from that copy too. A BCC recipient therefore sees the To and Cc lists in full and sees none of the other BCC recipients.

Two consequences follow, and the first one causes most of the damage:

1. Reply All exposes a BCC recipient. Nothing stops someone in the Bcc field from hitting Reply All, and when they do, their address lands in front of everybody on the To and Cc lines. If the point of the BCC was that this person's involvement stays quiet, say so in the message.
2. BCC is not encryption. The message travels exactly as it would otherwise. Hiding a recipient list from other recipients is a different thing from protecting the contents from anyone else.

When to use BCC, and when not to

Use it when:

• You are mailing a group of customers or contacts who have no business seeing each other's addresses. This is the case BCC was invented for, and it is a real data-protection concern rather than a stylistic one.
• You want to kill a Reply All chain before it starts on an announcement that needs no discussion. If the announcement has to be readable on a phone at the same time, how you format the message matters more than the recipient field.
• A stakeholder needs to see a thread without being visible in it, and there is an actual policy reason for that, such as an HR process.

Do not use it when:

• You are quietly copying someone's manager on a message about them. People find out. The cost of being caught doing this is much higher than the cost of forwarding the thread openly afterwards.
• You want a record and the recipient should know about it. That is what CC is for.
• The team has to work on the reply together. A hidden recipient cannot answer, cannot claim the message and cannot see what a colleague already said. If BCC is how your teammates stay aware of customer email, that is a workaround for missing shared visibility, and the working agreements behind a shared support address are the thing worth fixing.
• Compliance needs to see who received what. BCC leaves no readable trail, as the printing limitation above demonstrates.

The one-line test: if you would be uncomfortable with the To recipient learning about the BCC, do not send it. Mass-send privacy and documented HR protocols are the exceptions.

Teams that reach for BCC to keep each other in the loop are usually working around a missing shared inbox, where the whole team sees every customer conversation without anybody being copied on anything. What a shared inbox actually is covers the model; a tool like TriageFlow is one way to run it.

How many people can you BCC in Outlook?

Every answer you find on this question is different, and there is a reason: on business accounts the number is set by your administrator. Here is what Microsoft publishes.

Three more numbers from the Exchange Online page that decide whether a large send works at all:

• 30 messages per minute. Exceed it and submission is throttled and carried into the following minutes.
• About 200 recipients on a message encrypted with Microsoft Purview Message Encryption, well below the normal ceiling.
• A distribution group in your organization's shared address book counts as one recipient against both the per-message limit and the daily one. A personal distribution list stored in your Contacts counts every member separately, which is the difference between a 900-person send that works and one that does not.

Two things you will read elsewhere that Microsoft does not document anywhere: a specific number of BCC addresses that trips spam filtering, and a recommended batch size for splitting a large send. Both circulate as hard numbers and neither has a first-party source. What does affect whether a large send lands is authentication on your sending domain, and Microsoft is unambiguous about the standard: SPF, DKIM and DMARC are "interdependent building blocks that work together," and "anything less than all of the email authentication methods results in substandard protection". Beyond that, Microsoft's own advice on volume is the strategic answer: "Exchange Online customers who need to send legitimate bulk commercial email (for example, customer newsletters) should use third-party providers that specialize in these services." Newsletters belong in a dedicated bulk-email service with consent handling and unsubscribe links, not in a compose window.

Why is the BCC field not showing in Outlook?

You turned it on and it is gone again. Microsoft's documentation says the field should persist in both Windows apps, so a message that opens without it usually means you set the toggle somewhere else: a different account, a different device, or the web client rather than the desktop app. In classic Outlook, check the Bcc button's background on the Options tab. A dark background means it is on.

You are following the wrong version's instructions. New and classic Outlook for Windows are two different applications with two different menus. Go back to the Try the new Outlook toggle test near the top of this article.

A recipient realized they were BCC'd. They will always be able to work that out, because their own address is not in the To or Cc list they can see. BCC hides recipients from each other, not from themselves.

Automating BCC with Outlook rules

If you BCC the same address on everything, say an archive mailbox, classic Outlook rules get you close but not all the way.

1. File > Manage Rules & Alerts > New Rule
2. Start from a blank rule and choose Apply rule on messages I send
3. Pick your conditions, or leave them open to catch everything
4. For the action, choose Cc the message to people or public group
5. Name the rule and finish

Read step 4 again: the rule action is CC, not BCC, so the copied address is visible to your recipients. For archiving that is usually harmless. For anything where the copy is meant to be invisible, a rule does not do the job, and the answer is a retention or journaling policy applied at the server rather than a client-side rule any user can switch off.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between BCC and CC?

Both send a copy of the same message. CC recipients are listed in the message and everyone can see them. BCC recipients are removed from the copies that go to everyone else, so nobody on the To or Cc lines learns they received it, and BCC recipients cannot see each other either.

Can the recipient see who was BCC'd?

No. Microsoft's own wording is that "The names of people on the Bcc line are hidden from other recipients of the message." The one leak is Reply All: if a BCC recipient replies to everyone, their address goes to the whole To and Cc list.

How do I know if I was BCC'd on an email?

Look at the To and Cc lines. If your address is in neither and the message still arrived in your inbox, you were either BCC'd or reached through a distribution list. Outlook does not label the message as a BCC, so there is no flag to look for.

Why is the BCC field missing in new Outlook for Windows?

It is hidden by default, and the path has an extra step people skip: Options > Show fields > Show Bcc, not just Options. Once you select it, Microsoft says the field "appears every time you create a message until it's turned off."

How many people can I BCC in Outlook?

On a Microsoft 365 business account it is whatever your admin set, up to 1,000 recipients across To, Cc and Bcc combined, inside a daily ceiling of 10,000. Outlook.com with a subscription allows 500 per message. Watch one exception: a message encrypted with Microsoft Purview Message Encryption caps at about 200 recipients.

Can I BCC myself automatically on every email I send?

Not with a rule. The rule action classic Outlook offers is CC, so the address is visible to everyone. For an invisible, complete copy of outbound mail, that belongs in a server-side retention or journaling policy your administrator configures, not in your own client.

Bottom line

The field is hidden in every Outlook and the path differs per app, so the first question is always which Outlook you are in, followed by Options > Show fields > Show Bcc in the new Windows app, Options > Bcc in the classic one, and Bcc at the end of the To line on the web and on Mac. Both Windows apps keep the setting once you set it, Mac has a documented checkbox for it, and mobile has nothing.

Where BCC stops being the right answer is visibility inside your own team. It hides the people you most need to keep informed from each other, and it leaves no record anyone can search afterwards, which is usually why a permanent BCC habit turns out to be a missing shared address rather than a missing recipient field.