Reply-all to email moves recipients to Cc

Question

Level 1

11 points

Reply-all to email moves recipients to Cc

When using the email client on my iPhone (iOS 8), whenever I reply to an email with 1 or more recipients on the To line, the email client automatically moves everyone but the last sender to the Cc folder. This is undesirable behavior and I would like to know if there is a way to change this via settings.

More details / steps to reproduce:

I receive an email from PersonA, which was sent to PersonB, PersonC and myself (all on the To line of the mail)
I use the Reply-All button to reply to all
Expected behavior: my email reply is sent to Persona, PersonB and PersonC (all of whom are on the To line).
Actual Observed behavior: my email reply is sent to Persona on the To line, but PersonB and PersonC are moved to the Cc line.

Thank you.

iPhone 6, iOS 8.1.3

Posted on Feb 23, 2015 7:22 PM

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Answer 1

pefrat Author

Level 1

11 points

Feb 25, 2015 9:21 PM in response to Matt_M.

Hello Matt and thank you for the quick response.

In my experience and opinion, the email client should not automatically move the recipients from the To field to the Cc field. Instead, it should preserve the same structure that the original email had and allow the sender of the mail to make changes if so desired. Allow me to explain and provide some examples.

The reason that there is a different field for To and Cc is that each one tends to have a slightly different purpose. While either field will deliver the mail to the intended recipients, typical email etiquette has lead to the understanding that recipients in the To field are expected to read and respond or take some action, while recipients in the Cc field are being included for informational purposes only, and that they are not necessarily expected to respond (see netmanners.com/303/to-or-cc).

Email users who receive messages have grown to expect that if their address is in the Cc line, they may treat the mail as having lower priority than they would otherwise do if their address was in the To field. Moreover, in many cases and particularly in corporate environments, users have set up rules that deliver their emails to different folders based on whether they were included on the To line or the Cc line. If the email client always moves everyone but the last sender to the Cc field, then in a thread with multiple recipients and several replies from multiple people, recipients' addresses will be moved back and fourth a number of times from To to Cc and back. This can at best be at very annoying and at worst, cause email rules to deliver some of the messages to one folder and some to another.

For the reasons above, I would expect that the iOS email client should behave like the vast majority of other email clients and preserve the structure that was in the original mail, while letting the sending users chose if others need to remain in the To field, move to the Cc field or be removed altogether.

Thank you,

-Paz

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Answer 2

Feb 29, 2016 1:42 PM in response to Matt_M.

HI Matt

I too have this same question and am getting hammered on it from some EVPs at work. You mention this is the expected behavior. I was hoping you could provide a link to an apple doc that shows this as the expected behavior? This is the only client that does this. Windows Mobile, Android, Outlook. They all preserve the To and CC lines.

Thanks

Trevor

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Answer 3

Matt_M.

Community Operations

Feb 25, 2015 7:04 AM in response to pefrat

Hello pefrat,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities! I understand that when you “Reply All” to a message the additional recipients are moved to the "CC:" field. This is expected behavior in iOS as well as OS X Mail. Is there a reason you would rather have the recipients in the “To:” field as opposed to the “CC:” field?

If you want to manually move the recipient address from the "CC:" field to the "To:" field, you can absolutely do so. Just keep in mind that the end result is the same:

Write messages - iPhone

http://help.apple.com/iphone/8/#/iph3caef30a

Change a recipient from Cc to Bcc. After you enter recipients, you can drag them from one field to another or change their order.

(This applies to the “To:” field as well)

Cheers,

Matt M.

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Answer 4

To_Mi

Level 4

1,202 points

Feb 29, 2016 3:02 PM in response to Random_Name43

I know some people prefer to keep to: recipients in reply message as they were in the original message, but I prefer the way Apple’s Mail does.

If you don’t satisfy with Apple’s, you may try to find alternatives in App Store. There are many of them, some are even free.

Some of them may meet your demands.

I was hoping you could provide a link to an apple doc that shows this as the expected behavior?

For your reference, here is the link to the internet standard, RFC 5322 (sorry, not apple’s )

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-3.6.3

When a message is a reply to another message, the mailboxes of the

authors of the original message (the mailboxes in the "From:" field)

or mailboxes specified in the "Reply-To:" field (if it exists) MAY

appear in the "To:" field of the reply since these would normally be

the primary recipients of the reply. If a reply is sent to a message

that has destination fields, it is often desirable to send a copy of

the reply to all of the recipients of the message, in addition to the

author. When such a reply is formed, addresses in the "To:" and

"Cc:" fields of the original message MAY appear in the "Cc:" field of

the reply, since these are normally secondary recipients of the

reply. If a "Bcc:" field is present in the original message,

addresses in that field MAY appear in the "Bcc:" field of the reply,

but they SHOULD NOT appear in the "To:" or "Cc:" fields.

Note: Some mail applications have automatic reply commands that

include the destination addresses of the original message in the

destination addresses of the reply. How those reply commands

behave is implementation dependent and is beyond the scope of this

document. In particular, whether or not to include the original

destination addresses when the original message had a "Reply-To:"

field is not addressed here.

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