Outlook.com Moving Addresses From Bcc Field to the TO Field When Email is Sent via Desktop Email Client

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Problem

Bcc addresses do not process properly (see situations below) when three events occur concurrently:

• After a person’s Microsoft Outlook.com account is migrated over to the new Outlook Mail processing (“Outlook Mail” shows in the upper left corner of the Microsoft Outlook web page instead of “Outlook.com”);
• Emails are sent using a non-Microsoft desktop email program (e.g. eM Client, Mailbird, Postbox, and Thunderbird); and
• Emails are sent using IMAP through the outgoing SMTP Outlook.com server (smtp-mail.outlook.com Port 587).

Situations

1. When a person does not put an email address in the “To” and “Cc” fields, and puts an email address or a group list into the “Bcc” field, the email addresses from the “Bcc” field are moved to the “To” field after the handoff to the SMTP Outlook.com server.
2. When a person puts email addresses in the "To", "Cc", and "Bcc" fields, the result is that the email addresses used in the "To" and "Cc" fields receive their emails and the email address used in the "Bcc" field never receives the email after the handoff to the SMTP Outlook.com server.

Findings

1. “Bcc” addresses are processed properly when a person uses a web browser to send the emails.
2. “Bcc” addresses are processed properly when a person uses the Microsoft desktop email program (Windows 10 Mail App).
3. “Bcc” addresses are processed properly after a person’s Microsoft Outlook.com account is migrated over to the new Outlook Mail processing and that person uses a non-Microsoft desktop email program with connections using Microsoft Exchange (e.g. an option in eM Client).
4. “Bcc” addresses are NOT processed properly after a Microsoft account is migrated to Outlook Mail as shown in the problem and situations above.

Questions

1. Is Microsoft going to fix the bug that prevents “Bcc” addresses from processing properly as stated in the problem and situations above after a Microsoft account is migrated to Outlook Mail? If yes, when?
2. If Microsoft is not going to fix the bug, is Microsoft going to require non-Microsoft desktop email programs to provide connections through the Microsoft Exchange so “Bcc” addresses are processed properly?

Ron or anyone else:

Please help us.

The two Bcc problems I mentioned on June 23^rd^ still exist for me and others when we use a non-Microsoft desktop email program (eM Client, Mailbird, Postbox, Thunderbird) to send emails through the outgoing IMAP SMTP server connected to Outlook.com. However, those same Bcc problems do not exist if I use the Microsoft desktop Windows 10 Mail App. That tells me the IMAP settings we use in the non-Microsoft desktop email programs (incoming imap-mail.outlook.com Port 993 and outgoing smtp-mail.outlook.com Port 587) must be different from the setting used by the Microsoft Windows 10 Mail App. And, I can’t find anything on the internet that tells me what those Windows 10 Mail App settings are to connect to the Outlook.com server because the Mail App has all that stored internally.

Would anyone who has communications access to Microsoft technical support please find out the following for us as it relates to the Microsoft Windows 10 Mail App connecting to the server at Outlook.com?

Type of access – IMAP or something else

Incoming server name –

Incoming server port –

Outgoing server name –

Outgoing server port –

That way, we might be able to correct our problems by changing to different setting in our non-Microsoft desktop email programs.

I understand that these problems only impact a small number of people who use a desktop email program going through Outlook.com. But, we really need to be able to send out our emails properly to our Bcc addresses. We just need a little more help.

I would like to thank Laurel for having done some pretty thorough testing. I have the same issues and initially assumed my mail client, Thunderbird, which has served me brilliantly for some years, had made a change over which I had no control. NOT SO!

My experience, and also my wife's, on a different PC, matches Laurel's exactly - using live.com, gmail and another mail account for various test messages, it is the Microsoft server which is now misbehaving.

Looking a bit further I find at http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/668443/Windows-10-Hotmail-Live-Mail-2012-Upgrade-Outlook that whilst the newspaper apparently knows "Microsoft is about to retire its Windows Live Mail service and has warned Hotmail and Outlook.com users to move to the web or choose a modern desktop app......". I (plus wife) have 4 regularly used Live/Hotmail accounts and whilst some Current Affairs type stuff has arrived from Microsoft, absolutely no advice on the mail services changing significantly has appeared!!

By my reckoning Thunderbird is an up to date piece of software (I had it's latest update today) and it is completely inexcusable for Microsoft to hide behind Javier Soltero's "enhanced performance, security and reliability" in screwing up a fundamental e-mail privacy facility, the BCC. Surely there are common standards for all e-mail servers and my conclusion has to be that MS has unilaterally decided to change something..... otherwise they would work as they have for years and still should work.

I've just tried using the Web access on a couple of the accounts and discover that the new interface is useless for me (all messages in one long list and abysmal response time to open one, lists of contacts have lost their names when opened, so are listed in alphabetical order of e-mail address) - and on one account finding mail itself was impossible though I could see all the account info. Next step: "Choose a modern desktop app" - I suppose Office 365 is recommended? - but the post from Ron 31 May suggests that also fails to communicate as it should. Does anybody know one which does? Thunderbird was great and still should be.

Is Microsoft really trying to drive users like me towards Linux and steer clear of Microsoft anything as far as is possible?

Thanks also for some relevant correspondence at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show\_bug.cgi?id=1279558 - which guided me here.