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I am looking for a way in Gmail to send group email to multiple recipients, but each recipient only sees his/her own email address in the "To:" field. I know I can put all recipients' email addresses in the "Bcc:" field, but the recipients will then see their own email address only in the "Bcc:" field, while the "To:" field becomes empty.

I have seen this can be done, but I am not sure if Gmail has been used, or if this has been assisted by third-party software / program.

I also found this related question, but it is for Outlook only, and the URL given in the answer seems to be outdated: https://superuser.com/questions/224502/how-to-send-group-mail-to-multiple-recipients-but-have-each-recipient-see-their

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    It is normal to put your own address in the to field when using bcc. Mar 2, 2015 at 11:14
  • If this is in the workplace, a common solution is to send the email to a named group in Outlook (eg 'Small Pink Leprechauns')
    – sapi
    Mar 2, 2015 at 11:17
  • @DavidPostill Will putting the sender's own email address in the "To:" field be considered a likely spam by recipients or email filters?
    – LaBird
    Mar 2, 2015 at 12:00
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    It will be the content of the mail and it's source that is more likely to determine it's spaminess -- but only google will know for sure :/ Mar 2, 2015 at 12:49
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    Sending email to a large-ish group of recipients with each person Bcc'd and no other recipients is a very common thing to do. Indeed, it is considered bad etiquette to do otherwise in lots of common situations. Any spam filter which places much importance on the distinction between this and individual 'To' recipients should be considered to be broken.
    – user68837
    Mar 2, 2015 at 14:46

3 Answers 3

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One option would be to use mail-merge from Outlook which is suggested in the linked answer (link).

Another would be to set up a macro to schedule a mail. Have a look at this answer

A Gmail account can be suspended permanently for spam mails, so be careful (link).

Suggested by @LaBird-Mail-merge tutorial for gmail

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    Thank you very much for your answer, as it throws me some light about what I want is something known as "mail merge" (I have no idea about the meaning of this term before). With this clue I have done some searching and found another solution (developers.google.com/apps-script/articles/mail_merge), only using Gmail together with some Google Apps Script.
    – LaBird
    Mar 2, 2015 at 10:49
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I recommend not to trying to send a lot of emails from a Google account directly. Use a tool like MailChimp; they may help in this process. Sending mail letters can be painful and frustrating, because it appears as a simple task, but it is not. You have a lot of laws and rules to follow, and it can be very hard to make it the right way.

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Yeah it's quite simple.

Compose a new Gmail message. Look at the upper right. Click on the text "BCC".

This adds a BCC field. Type your recipients into that field with comma separating them.

Let me know how it goes.

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    Yes it can work, but the "To:" field of the email becomes empty. My main concern for an empty "To:" field is whether the recipient and the email filters will tend to think such email is likely spam.
    – LaBird
    Mar 2, 2015 at 11:08
  • The general practice I've seen is to put the sender in the To: field as well.
    – ale
    Mar 3, 2015 at 0:33

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