What is CC in Gmail?
CC (Carbon Copy) in Gmail allows you to send a single email to multiple recipients, while ensuring that all recipients can see each other’s email addresses. The primary use of the CC function is to keep people informed by including them in email conversations, even if they are not the main recipient.
For example, if you’re emailing a colleague about a project, you can CC your manager to keep them in the loop. CC is helpful when transparency is needed, as all CC recipients know who else received the message.
While CC keeps everything visible, Gmail also offers the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) option if you need to keep recipients hidden, which we will explain later.
Gmail CCs—and by extension, BCCs—also have other uses aside from simply looping in a bunch of people to your emails. Used properly, you can keep copies of emails for your own reference or help keep individuals outside of the primary recipients informed with the latest updates in the email thread.
How Does Gmail CC Work?
In Gmail, the CC option is easy to use whenever you're composing an email. It allows you to send the same email to multiple recipients at once. Here's how you can CC someone in Gmail:
- On the right-most section of the To field, click on Cc, and a separate field should appear beneath it.
- Here, you can CC multiple recipients by typing out their email addresses—or selecting from the dropdown suggestions if they’re people that you’ve sent mail to before.
- To remove someone from your CC list, just click the X next to their address. This is useful if you added someone by mistake or realize the person doesn’t need to be included in the email conversation.
- Once you’ve entered all the intended recipients of your email, click Send. Now everyone on your CC list will receive a copy of your email that was sent to your primary recipients.
Practical use cases for CC
- Team Updates: If you're sending important information to a client and want to keep your manager informed without expecting a response, you can CC them.
- Project Coordination: CC is useful for keeping several team members in the loop on ongoing projects, allowing everyone to stay up-to-date without needing direct replies from everyone.
- Information Sharing: CC allows you to include secondary recipients who need to see the information but may not be directly involved, such as stakeholders.
BCC vs CC
You may have noticed that aside from the option to CC recipients, there’s also another option called Bcc right next to the CC button. BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy, and it works similarly to CC where your email is sent to other people aside from your primary recipients.
Unlike CC, the primary recipient won’t be able to see whoever is on your BCC list. This can be useful in situations where you need to keep a copy of your emails since you can BCC yourself in an email chain for future reference. This is also useful in situations where you have a large number of recipients, and you don’t expect a response.
Using BCC is also useful for privacy purposes. If you send an email to unrelated individuals, such as subscribers of a mailing list, you can use the BCC feature to keep the recipients’ email addresses hidden from each other.
To add a recipient to the BCC list, click on the Bcc button next to the Cc option along the To field. A new field will appear underneath where you can add BCC recipients similar to how you add CC recipients. It’s also possible to have a mix of CC and BCC recipients by clicking on their respective buttons.
How to CC in Gmail Depending on Your Device
Google generally keeps the same design of Gmail across platforms, so you can easily switch between devices and won’t have any trouble adding recipients to CC or BCC.
- For desktop: After clicking Compose on your Gmail client, simply click Cc at the end of the To field.
- For Android or iPhone: After clicking Compose in the Gmail app, click the down-pointed arrow at the end of the To field to access the Cc and Bcc fields.
After these steps, just add or remove your recipients as you’d like, then hit Send for desktop, or the arrow (paper plane) icon for mobile, to send the email when you’re done.
How to Blind Copy Someone on Gmail?
To send an email with hidden recipients in Gmail, click Compose, then select Bcc (next to the Cc option) in the email composition window. Enter the email addresses of the people you want to blind copy in the Bcc field. This will hide the recipients' email addresses from each other when you send the email.
How to Find CC’d Emails in Your Inbox
When you carbon copy someone on an email, your outgoing messages will appear in the Sent folder along with other sent emails, even those that have no recipients in CC. Emails sent to multiple recipients will have the recipients listed with commas.
What happens if someone adds you to CC?
In Gmail, emails where you are CC’d will arrive in your inbox like any other message and won’t be placed in a separate folder. This can make it challenging to quickly locate these emails, especially in a crowded inbox.
This is where the Clean Email app can simplify things. As a powerful inbox management tool, Clean Email helps you efficiently locate and organize emails, including those where you’ve been CC’d.
By navigating to the You are CC-ed Smart Folder, you can easily filter and review all emails that have you in the CC field—whether it's a recent conference mailing list or an important message sent by your boss to multiple coworkers.
Automation and Settings for CC in Gmail
Gmail doesn’t offer a built-in feature to automatically CC or BCC someone on every email you send, but there are some workarounds and third-party tools to help you customize this function.
How to set default CC in Gmail
In Gmail, you can only add recipients to the CC or BCC fields manually for each message. However, some Chrome extensions and add-ons can enhance Gmail’s functionality by allowing you to set default CC or BCC fields automatically.
You can also connect your Gmail account to an email client like Outlook, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail. Unlike Gmail, these clients allow you to configure default CC/BCC settings for every email you send. These settings will apply to all emails sent from the client while still using your Gmail account.
How to automatically CC or BCC yourself in Gmail
There are times when you may want to keep track of all your outgoing emails by receiving a copy of them in your own inbox. This is where adding yourself to the CC or BCC list can be useful.
Unfortunately, Gmail doesn't offer a native solution to automatically CC or BCC yourself on every email. You can only manually add yourself to the copy list for each message. Alternatively, you can use external apps and extensions, as mentioned above, to manage automatic CC settings.
Even setting up a forwarding address won’t automatically CC someone, as forwarding only works for incoming mail, and Gmail filters generally apply to received emails, not outgoing ones.
Wrap-Up
The CC option in Gmail is a great way to smooth over the process of sending emails and keep relevant people informed. Use it to keep others informed without making them primary recipients. Choose BCC when you need to protect recipient privacy or avoid long reply chains.
