How To Automatically BCC an Email Address in Gmail

Jamie Read more April 18, 2019

Sending emails to yourself is a way to remind yourself of events or of what you said to someone. If you need to BCC yourself regularly and the calendar isn’t doing it for you, it is possible to automatically BCC yourself in Gmail. This tutorial will show you how.

How To Automatically BCC an Email Address in Gmail

BCC means Blind Carbon Copy and is from the days when typists used to place a second sheet of paper underneath their main sheet with a piece of carbon paper between them. When the letter was typed, the typist would hit the keys a little harder and the carbon would transfer onto that second sheet, the carbon copy. Blind just refers to the intended recipient of the original not seeing the copy.

Fast forward thirty years and BCC just means making a digital copy of an email that is invisible to the recipient of the original. This is used a lot in business and is a way of retaining correspondence without having to work through email chains and for reminding yourself of tasks or events without using a calendar.

Automatically BCC yourself in Gmail

As most of us have a Gmail account, it makes sense to show you how to automatically BCC yourself in Gmail. You will need a chrome extension for this to work but otherwise it’s all about the configuration.

Install Bcc Me for Gmail™ as a Chrome extension.
Allow it access to your Gmail when it asks.
Enter the email address you want the BCC to be sent to in the popup window.

From now on, every time you reply or compose an email, you will automatically receive a BCC copy of it in the email address you added in Step 3.

The upside to Bcc Me for Gmail™ is that it simply gets on with the job of BBC’ing you. The downside is that it hasn’t been updated since 2012 but I use it and it works with Gmail’s new system so is still worth checking out.

If you cannot get it to work, Auto BCC for Gmail is another option. It does much the same thing but requires you to register it before it works. The developer then auto-enrols you into newsletters. That’s not a cool way to run an extension which is why I recommend the other add-on instead.

Send work emails from your home account

If you BCC your home email to remind you of work appointments or meetings, being able to send a work email from home might also help. As long as your employer uses Gmail or G-Suite, you should be able to import your work account and use it with your home account.

This is useful for small businesses, freelancers and those for whom flexibility is important.

Open your home Gmail account and select the cog menu.
Select Settings and Accounts and Imports.
Add your work email where it says Import mail and contacts.
Add your work email address and your work name.
Complete the import wizard.

This works for most small business Gmail accounts and should allow you to check and respond to work emails from within your personal account.

Set automatic responses

If you’re a freelancer or small business, being responsive is essential. However, you’re likely busy doing the million other things required of a small business owner and won’t always have the time. That’s when the automatic response feature of Gmail comes in useful.

You can set an auto response message to any incoming email. You can use it for Out Of Office notifications, vacation notifications or a quick, ‘We received your email and will response within 24 hours’ messages.

Select Gmail Settings and the General tab.
Scroll to the bottom of the General tab to Out of Office Auto Reply.
Write your message and set a date and time.
Enable this message every time you’re not going to be near Gmail.

While it is predominantly for out of office, you can actually put anything you like in there, hence its use here.

There is also a canned response add-on that allows you to create email templates for a one-click reply to people. It is useful to firing off a quick acknowledgement or thankyou and follow up later.

Select Gmail Settings and the Advanced tab.
Select Canned Responses and enable it.
Compose a new message and write an automatic response email.
Select the three dot menu icon within the Compose window and select Canned Responses.
Select Save Draft as Template and Save as New Template.
Name it something meaningful.

Now when you compose or reply, select the three dot menu icon, Canned Response and choose your message. It will automatically populate the email ready for sending!

It is very straightforward to automatically BCC yourself in Gmail and these other tricks add even more power to the platform. Good luck with it!