The Embarrassment of CC

P

Pitch

Like some kind of sick clockwork, I just once again, as I do about 6
times a year, sent out an email to 50 people with all their names in
the CC field.

After scaring the cat with the scream that followed, I'm now settled
down enough to ask some questions:

1. When I'm sending out an email to a 400 people in a certain category,
I need to have both a New Email window as well as the Address Book
window open, sorted by Category. Because Entourage 2004's new email
window doesn't automatically show the BCC field, I have to first drag
names into the CC field, then remember to re-drag them into the BCC
field.

Do others with a similar situation and need have a better system?


2. Is there any way to create an AppleScript Warning System that pauses
any email that has more than X amount of names in the CC field with a
message that says, "Yo. Idiot. Are you sure you want to send this email
that contains 49 addresses in the CC field? Hmm? Really? You want to
scare the cat again?"

(as an aside, there's now a free Safari hack that does something
similar; it provides a warning before quitting or closing a window
containing multiple tabs. It's call Taboo).

3. If the MS folks are reading this: please simply allow us to have all
three address fields-To, CC, and BCC-available and showing. Not
just To and CC. Thanks!


Thanks for any ideas on this.
 
D

Daiya Mitchell

<snipped stuff>
1. When I'm sending out an email to a 400 people in a certain category,
I need to have both a New Email window as well as the Address Book
window open, sorted by Category. Because Entourage 2004's new email
window doesn't automatically show the BCC field,
Click to expand...

Mine does, when I cmd-opt-n. If I click on the message body, then the
"click here to add recipients" pane only says To and CC, but I can't click
on the address area without the entire thing expanding to show all three
fields. And tab from CC automatically goes to BCC, on my machine. It looks
like so:
http://daiya.mvps.org/demo/newmessage.gif
I have to first drag
names into the CC field, then remember to re-drag them into the BCC
field.
Click to expand...

Also, if I select a bunch of contacts, then cmd-C, click in the BCC field on
the new email, and cmd-V, it seems to work out fine.

I only tried it with 7, though.

Entourage 2004 11.2, Panther 10.3.9.

Daiya

PS. Poor kitty. :)
 
P

Pitch

Yes, my Entourage behaves the same. However, that BCC field does not
stay open and available for direct copy and pasting when you click into
the Address book *when the Address book is open in a separate window.*
The reason I mention this distnction is because you can't get at a
certain Category of contacts any other way. True, if you click on the
small Address Book icon above the To field, then the BCC fied stays
open. But that Address Book view only shows Name and Email. Not
Category; it's good for dragging a name in one at a time, but not for
adding 10 or more at a time.
 
D

Daiya Mitchell

Yes, my Entourage behaves the same. However, that BCC field does not
stay open and available for direct copy and pasting when you click into
the Address book *when the Address book is open in a separate window.*
Click to expand...

Here I have no problem opening the address book in a separate window and
copying and pasting into the BCC field in a new email. I do it like
this--in Address Book window, select a bunch of contacts, hit cmd-c. Then I
hit cmd-opt-n for a new message, or I cmd-tilde to an existing message. I
click in the BCC field and hit cmd-v. (It is true that I have to click in
the BCC field to activate it)

Actually, I can't figure out how you are dragging from Address Book to the
new message at all--well, I guess you have a bigger monitor than me--never
mind.

But, I moved everything around so that I could actually drag--and noticed
that once an address is in the BCC field, BCC stays available. So if you
put one address in there when you first create the message, you should be
able to drag the rest into BCC directly, instead of going through CC.

Or use the keyboard instead of dragging.
The reason I mention this distnction is because you can't get at a
certain Category of contacts any other way. True, if you click on the
small Address Book icon above the To field, then the BCC fied stays
open. But that Address Book view only shows Name and Email. Not
Category; it's good for dragging a name in one at a time, but not for
adding 10 or more at a time.
Click to expand...
I never use that thing at all and it did not enter into my calculations.

Daiya
 
P

Pitch

Daiya, thank you. I had never realized that by copying a line in the
Address book, it would only copy over the email address (I'd only been
doing click 'n drags for large email grabs). And I've been using
Entourage from the start, yikes. Great, great tip, and that completely
handles the problem for me. Thank you.

PS: thanks, too, for the cmd-opt-n for New Email Window when you're in
the Address Book. I thought I knew all the keyboard shortcuts...
 
Top