Can You BCC on an Outlook Calendar Invite? Yes! Here’s How
You’re not alone in asking, “Can you BCC on an Outlook Calendar Invite?” The short answer is yes, but Outlook makes you use a few clever workarounds.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the best methods to send discreet invitations. More importantly, we’ll touch on why protecting the data in these critical calendar events is just as important as managing the invite list itself.
Why People Ask: Can You BCC on an Outlook Calendar Invite?
Protect the Privacy of attendees: This is the number one reason why a meeting organizer would hide the participant list from the participants. More so in cases where there are participants outside of your organization. Exposing emails like this may violate local compliance laws. To ensure such a regulatory violation does not occur, it is best to hide the participant list by using BCC on an Outlook Calendar Invite.
Too many Attendees: When there is an organization-wide meeting or a digital conference with a lot of participants, it is a general practice to keep the attendee list hidden. This not only prevents accidental reply-all incidents but also keeps the user’s screen decluttered, which would otherwise be filled with hundreds of IDs whom they don’t even know.
Confidential meetings: Sensitive HR meetings, like those done at the time of offboarding users in Office 365, require confidentiality. The same is true for other need-to-know type sessions.
What is the Best Way to BCC on an Outlook Calendar Invite? Hide the Attendee List
Here is how you do it
- Step 1. Open Outlook web app/new client.
- Step 2. Switch over to the Calendar tab.
- Step 3. Click on the New event icon.
- Step 4. Expand Response options.
- Step 5. Enable Hide attendee list.
Complete the rest of the steps for creating the meeting as you usually do.
Can You BCC on an Outlook Calendar Invite from the Desktop Client?
Yes, but you need the Outlook Classic edition. The feature we are trying to use is patched out in the new version, and hence no longer possible to use it.
However, if you have access to the Outlook classic client, follow these steps
- Step 1: Open Outlook Classic
- Step 2: Switch to Calendar
- Step 3: Make a New Meeting
- Step 4: On the Meeting creation window, switch to Scheduling Assistant
- Step 5: Click on Add Attendees, select the names of meeting participants one after the other, and press Resources. Then hit OK. Doing this effectively acts as a BCC on an Outlook Calendar Invite.
- Step 6: Once done, finish up the rest of the meeting details and send.
None of the invitees will know who else is in the meeting. There is a third option as well.
Share Calendar in Outlook 365 Via Mail
Create a meeting on any Outlook platform, Web, Mobile (Android or iOS), or Desktop Client (Classic or New).
Add this meeting as an iCalendar attachment to an email draft, add all the members in the BCC field, and send.
This is the answer most people have had in mind when they asked Can you BCC on an Outlook calendar invite
Moreover, this method may sound easy to implement, but it has major limitations.
Like you won’t be able to track any responses (so you won’t know if they will make it to the meeting or not). Plus, if you make any emergency changes to the meeting, like rescheduling the .ics recipients won’t receive live updates, they would be essentially cut off from any new developments.
Now that You Can BCC on an Outlook Calendar Invite, Make A Backup
Calendar invites like this one are some of the most critical data inside an organization. Losing it to unintended deletions or uncontrollable outages is not something that IT admins look forward to. Therefore, it is a good idea to back up this data ASAP.
Once your meetings conclude, get a copy of the SysTools Office 365 Backup and Restore Tool to create a safe copy of your calendar.
This tool has a date filter that you use to define the time frame of the backup. The best part is you don’t need user credentials and can restore the backup any time in the future.
Here is how the tool works:
- Step 1. You open the tool on your machine, then select Microsoft 365 as the source and Outlook(PST) as the backup format.
- Step 2. Select the calendar workload, apply a date filter, and press Next.
- Step 3. Validate the M365 admin credentials
- Step 4. Validate the backup folder path
- Step 5. Map users
- Step 6. Select, Validate, and Backup.
Conclusion
Now, Can You BCC on an Outlook Calendar Invite? should no longer be a problem. We have explored all the possible techniques to achieve the result, and that too without much effort. Moreover, admins must protect the metadata of their important calendar events so that they can use the solution we have described here.