BCC Limit ?

Question

BCC Limit ?

I have used bcc feature within Mail many times before, but not lately. Now that I have upgarded to OS X Mavericks, perhaps there are some quirks or bugs in Mail that I don't know about. Today, I tried to send a large group email with my address in the FROM and TO fields, and I added 50 addresses to the BCC. The message was "sent" (whoosh sound and all), and indeed I have a copy of it in my SENT mail folder, and showing all the BCC addresses, but nobody received the email. When I tested the BCC feature again by sending only ONE address within BCC (and of course populating the TO field with my own address), it worked fine. Is there a limit imposed by Mail on the number of BCC addresses that can be sent at one time ?

After doing some research, I then read about an alternative way to send BCC to a GROUP. The advice is to add a GROUP name to the TO list (not BCC), then make sure to UNCHECK the box in Mail > Preferences > Compose > When sending to a group, show all member addresses. I did this. While COMPOSING the message, the TO list showed only the NAME of the group, but when I clicked send, it sent the message to everybody, revealing all of the addresses to everyone. This is exactly what I was trying to PREVENT from happeneing ... Argggh ! Any thoughts ?

Posted on May 3, 2014 2:42 PM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,252 points

May 3, 2014 5:04 PM in response to Polar Explorer

I can't explain the first, but the feature you talk about in the second case hasn't worked in Mavericks since it was released.

For the first, have you tried various number of recipients to see if you can identify a limit. Some ISPs restrict the number of recipients; maybe yours has recently changed the policy.

Mail would fail to send if one of the addresses was incorrectly formed; that might be something to look for as it might be successfully sending the To address, but fails the Bcc list and doesn't warn you. Seems odd, though.

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Answer 2

May 9, 2014 2:57 PM in response to Barney-15E

Hi Barney - Your suggestion worked ! It solved my problem ! It appears that if ONE of the email addresses in a GROUP is mis-spelled, then the entire GROUP does not get sent. Furthermore, there is no (apparent) limit to the number if emails that can be sent (in a GROUP) via Apple Mail. I sent a GROUP message to 50 people, and once I fixed the mis-spelled email address, they all received my message (as bcc) with no problem at all. Thanks for your help !

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