When working in groups and project teams, you usually send emails to everyone involved. This ensures tasks are assigned trans­par­ently and always keeps the team up to date. But these kinds of emails are only rarely directed at the whole group. You generally only address selected col­leagues. Everyone else will receive a carbon copy (CC) and will simply read it as indirect re­cip­i­ents.

We explain the meaning of CC, how it can be used for pro­fes­sion­al email com­mu­nic­a­tion, and how it differs from other email address fields.

What is carbon copy (CC)?

Carbon copy is an ad­di­tion­al address field in the email header. Re­cip­i­ents in the CC field receive a copy of the message. The term comes from carbon paper that was commonly used to duplicate documents.

CC vs. BCC

When writing a new email, replying to an email or for­ward­ing one, you’ll find up to three address fields in the header of your email window.

  • The To field is used to input the recipient’s address. This is where you enter the contacts you’re directly ad­dress­ing. These are typically the re­cip­i­ents you directly reach out to in the message.
  • The CC field is located beneath the To field. Contacts you enter here will receive the message for their in­form­a­tion without feeling directly addressed. Contacts in the CC field are displayed to all re­cip­i­ents of an email.
  • The CC field is followed by the BCC field (short for blind carbon copy) – the address field for the re­cip­i­ents of blind copies. Contact addresses in the BCC field are kept hidden from email re­cip­i­ents.

Some email programs hide the CC or BCC feature in the standard view. In this case, use the buttons provided to display the extended address options.

The screen­shot below shows all three address fields in the message window of the email program Microsoft Outlook.

Image: Microsoft Outlook 2013: The address fields To, CC, and BCC in the email window
Microsoft Outlook 2013: The address fields “To”, “CC”, and “BCC” in the window for composing new messages
Tip

The BCC field in Microsoft Outlook is hidden in the standard setting. We show you how to activate this with just a few clicks in the related article on the topic.

What you should keep in mind when using the CC field

Whether you place a recipient’s address in the To, CC or BCC field depends on the following two questions:

  • Is the contact the main recipient of the email?
  • Should this address be visible to all re­cip­i­ents and is this per­miss­ible?

Dif­fer­en­ti­ate between main and CC re­cip­i­ents

You address all main re­cip­i­ents of your message in the To field. Re­gard­less of the order of addresses, this enables you to show that you intend them to be main direct re­cip­i­ents and that you may also expect a response from them.

On the other hand, re­cip­i­ents in the CC field receive a copy of the message simply for their in­form­a­tion. This is also referred to as a courtesy copy. A reply is not usually expected from CC re­cip­i­ents.

CC re­cip­i­ents are always visible

Addresses in the To and CC field are displayed to all re­cip­i­ents of a message. You should therefore only use the CC field in email mailing groups in which the in­di­vidu­al group members already know each other.

For data privacy reasons, ad­vert­ising emails, news­let­ters, and public circulars should never be sent to customers or business partners using the CC field. Instead, you can use the mail merge feature in your email program or the BCC field.

Tip

You can find more tips and tricks for business email cor­res­pond­ence in our “email guide” as well as how to mail merge in Word.

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