How to auto BCC in Outlook?

What is BCC in email?

In term of e-mail knowledge, BCC means Blind Carbon Copy. It serves a purpose of sending extra e-mail messages to another party without acknowledging recipients in both To: and CC: fields of such forwarding action.

In Outlook 2016/2019, auto BCC is missing?

If you use Outlook at work, you probably have met some situation where you need to BCC outgoing e-mail messages to your boss for various reasons. However, when you click on New Email to start writing, you do not see BCC field anywhere. How do we display BCC field?

auto bcc outlook

It is easy! In New Email window, simply click on OPTIONS on menu and click on Bcc button above Show Fields. Then, you will see an extra field of Bcc... popping up below Cc.... This field will stay there permanently in the future when you write new e-mails.

How to BCC sender itself?

When an e-mail is sent, there will be a copy in Sent Items (Items sent) folder. It is technically a way of auto BCC sender itself. However, it is hard to trace a particular e-mail among hundreds of sent items. This method does work out very well.

Some thinks that you can create a rule to send a copy of sent emails to a specified folder when some pre-defined conditions are met. But, there is one drawback that you cannot filter BCC yourself the outgoing mails.

outlook auto bcc myself

Auto BCC via VBA scripts?

By using Outlook's Rules and Alerts feature, it is only possible to CC to other e-mail addresses. Then, how to perform auto-BCC? Please refer to this article of How to send Auto BCC Outlook 2016. It is not as efficient for regular desktop users because it requires certain knowledge of program coding and it is not ready to use.

Auto BCC via Third-party Outlook Add-in?

The simplest way to get the job done is using a third-party Outlook add-in. There are a few venders out there, such as Power Toys for Outlook's ABCC, AbleBits's Auto BCC, and etc. The concept is as straight forward as listing BCC recipients, defining filter rules and done.

outlook auto bcc setup

Using an add-in with filter to trigger auto-BCC enables users to selectively send e-mail messages when certain conditions are met. It fits better into daily practice unlike auto BCC via VBA forwarding every e-mail every time.

For example, Power Toys for Outlook's ABCC feature picks 5 fields within an e-mail that most depicts intentions or purposes of what this e-mail is about. With From, To, Subject, Body, and Attachment file name, users can easily filter keyword-related e-mails and send them to some mailboxes they want. The best part of this auto-bcc feature is that the original recipient will not be aware of this secret e-mail forwarding on the back.

However, our suggestion to intended users is using this feature wisely. Be aware of what you are doing and do not attempt any unnecessary law violation.

Sync Outlook with FastMail server?

Sync Outlook with FastMail server?

FastMail is a private, secure, ad-free email hosting for you or your business according to its website.

Our biz partner came from Australia and he has trouble synchronizing his contact, calendar & task with Outlook 2016 and Office 365. He was disappointed that FastMail does not have solution for synchronization between his FastMail account and Outlook 2016/2013/2019/2010/2007. 

He was asking me if I have come across with any third-party solution. This makes me flashing back that EVO Collaborator for Outlook does support a variety of on-premises & cloud services.

I told him about the website and he was on his own. A few days later, he called me and gave me a surprising answer. Yes! It does support FastMail server as well as many other paid or free mail servers. He briefly told me a few steps on how to sync with FastMail. Here, I like to share with you guys in case you need it:

1. Download and install EVO Collaborator for Outlook
2. Open Configure profile(s)
3. Click on Profile #22 or later as long as it is vacant.
4. In server URL space, enter:
5. 
   
   https://caldav.fastmail.com/dav/
6. Enter username & password in corresponding area.
7. Note: password is an APP-PASSWORD which can be created in your fastmail web interface.
8. Click Test, Apply and Quit.

This is quite straight and simple. 

ownCloud Clients

ownCloud Clients for Windows

Self-hosting services merging out

As cost for storage and Internet access get lower and lower, end-users prefer installing their own NAS or small server at home or office. One of the major reasons is security and confidentiality. Files are no longer scattered around inside those cloud storages such as Dropbox, which we don't even know where files are actually physically stored. Also, cost per MB is lower if we do-it-ourselves. ownCloud comes in the play

In speaking of servers or NAS, Windows- or Linux- based ownCloud has been one of the popular choices since the beginning of 2010. You may find more resources on http://www.ownCloud.org/ or http://www.ownCloud.com/ .

Accessible resource sharing

What ownCloud WebDAV services can fulfil your daily running tasks? In case you are not yet familiar, here are reminders:

1. Files storage,
2. Calendar,
3. Task,
4. Address book,
5. Music streaming,
6. Sharing of content across groups or public,
7. Bookmarking,,
8. URL shortening,
9. Photo gallery,
10. Video viewer,
11. PDF and ODF viewer,
12. Connecting external storages

In other words, ownCloud basically provides information sharing of any sort.

ownCloud WebUI is powerful for your collaboration tasks

With ownCloud v7.0, lots of improvements have been made. You can sort large number of files more efficiently while users from other ownCloud server can virtually share files with you. You can edit documents with your local document editing applications such as Microsoft Word through a transparent layer while your colleagues are working on the same document at the same time. Resource sharing we mentioned above can all be done with ownCloud WebUI.

ownCloud clients

If you would like to have your local files to stay synced with files on your ownCloud server, you can download and install ownCloud Desktop Client software for your operating system from https://ownCloud.com/products/desktop-clients/. Any copy/delete/modify to files will reflect almost in real-time so that other people with proper privileges can access the most updated version of files on server. Among all platform versions of ownCloud Desktop Client software, ownCloud Windows 7 Client is perhaps more popular. Example: ownCloud's file sharing feature

With ownCloud Desktop Client software, it is easy to achieve file sharing through ownCloud's network folder mapping. For more detailed usage, please refer to the on-line manual (http://doc.owncloud.org/desktop/1.7/).

Any other 3rd party Apps I can use to access ownCloud services?

There are hundreds of 3rd party vendor writing both Desktop and Mobile Apps for ownCloud and they range from Multimedia, PIM, Productivity, Games to Tools as we mentioned above. You can visit ownCloud's Apps webpage that top 10 Apps are generally related to file sharing/management, calendar, task, and media streaming.

How do I retrieve ownCloud data on my mobile devices?

Accessing ownCloud address book, calendar and task from your mobiles devices can be handy if your are not in front of your desktop and laptop. Here are tips on each of mobile platforms on the market:

1. iOS - iPhone and iPAD both natively support ownCloud server through CardDAV and CalDAV.
2. Android - Try Contact-Sync and Calendar-Sync. For more detail, visit http://www.dmfs.org/
3. Windows Phone - There is an App called ownCloudSync. For more detail, visit http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/owncloudsync/2fdb96e1-7472-4be7-accf-835785f5dd91
4. Blackberry - Use BB's built-in CardDAV and CalDAV support and read the following thread from ownCloud forum: https://forum.owncloud.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9187

ownCloud services being Integrated into 3rd party e-mail client software

Other than existing Mobile Apps, imagine how convenient it would be that users access their ownCloud personal contact, agenda and to-do list within e-mail software applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird in your desktop PCs with no hassle?

How Outlook and Thunderbird retrieve data from ownCloud?

For the past few years, plug-ins or add-ins have been available for Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 & 2019 and Thunderbird. Such integrations turn out to evolve into alternatives to Microsoft Exchange Server or IBM Domino Server.

1. For Thunderbird, plug-ins of soGO connector and Lightning can do the job but they require much more work configuring initially.
2. For Microsoft Outlook, there is barely an add-in specifically written for Microsoft Outlook. iCAL4OL, Bynari and EVO Collaborator for Outlook are perhaps the ones that can do the job. I tried them all, but, as an end-user, Bynari and iCAL4OL are a bit too complicated to figure out how to configure. On the other hand, I installed, configured and used EVO Collaborator for Outlook with no hassle.

When NAS and ownCloud work together…

Occasionally, when people buy a NAS appliance, they also would like to stuff in an ownCloud server at no extra cost. This is when a NAS with ownCloud-capability comes in. There are NAS brands that come with built-in ownCloud features such as Thecus, Synology, and IONAS-server. There are also several NAS brands that require DIY implementation, such as D-Link, QNAP, and NETGEAR. You may google this solution for more detail.

Why ownCloud cannot send e-mails?

So far, e-mail messaging is still occupying a large percentage of how people communicate each other across Internet. However, e-mail messaging is missing from ownCloud even though ownCloud team has been working on its own mail server solution with no official release yet. For those of you who need an e-mail server alternative, you may try EVO Mail Server along with EVO Collaborator for Outlook that sync your contacts, calendars and tasks between ownCloud and Outlook . How to setup mail server Windows