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

I'm waiting for Sean.

Giving up a Hotmail address known to 15 years of contacts can wait a few more days or weeks.

Microsoft's reputation for customer focus seems to rest now on Sean (no pressure intended, but sort this out and the accolades for you will be heard far and wide). Great you stepped up Sean. Before you there was lack of understanding.

No problem.

Just to update the thread, the fix passed our initial testing and so I had the rollout of the fix prioritized and expedited. Once it is significantly rolled out in the service, I'll come back to get confirmation that the issue has been resolved.

Regards,

Sean

Dear Laurel,

Thank you sooooooooooo much for replying to my original thread (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail-osend/bcc-no-longer-works-with-outlook-2010-as-mail/46538c0b-e63f-44d3-b9cd-3a412f52c414) now closed; whilst Microsoft have not yet cured the problem, you don't know how wonderful it was to discover that I'm not the only one suffering this issue.  As you have done far more extensive testing than I have and have also received an acknowledgement from Microsoft that it is their software which is causing the problem, I have closed my thread and will monitor your much more comprehensive thread from here on in until Microsoft have fixed the issue.

I find it incredible that you first reported this problem back in May and that so many others have clicked the "Me too" button, but that Microsoft have only recently picked up on the issue and are still to fix it - just think of how many e-mails out of the billions which will have gone through their servers that this issue will have affected - it's mind blowing.  Surely they must have people monitoring these forums to spot when real bugs are being reported as opposed to "read the manual" reports; one would have thought so (but obviously not).

As you can see from my thread, I came across this issue only recently (luckily for me, I didn't receive the 'benefit' of their 'upgraded' service as early as you) but this problem is also there when using MS Outlook 2010 as the e-mail client (so, in my case every piece of software involved came from MS) and I was so desperate that I did pay the $149 to get their 'support' (which, in fairness, they did eventually refund when they realised that they could not fix the issue) - what a shambles.

Anyway, thank you again Laurel for your tireless effort.  I do hope that Microsoft will recognise your contribution and reward your hard work - they really need to do so even if it is only to give you, say, a free licence for their office suite (although, given this, I'm not sure you will want it).

Best regards

John

Sean:

It is Wednesday 10/26/16 at 15:00 pm EDT and I just tested for the problems identified in this thread to see if Microsoft had made any changes and put them into production. It appears that Microsoft has made changes and put them into production on the Outlook.com server that my email uses. My test results below show that everything seems to be working the way it should and the problems seem to be corrected for me.

Tests:

1. Put three email addresses in the TO field:
   1. Results after Send: email sent
   2. Results of Received: 3 emails received correctly as specified
2. Put three email addresses in the Bcc field:
   1. Results in Mail Header after Send: email sent To: “undisclosed- recipients” and Bcc: three email addresses put in the Bcc field
   2. Results of Received: 3 emails received correctly as specified
3. Put one email address in the To field and two email addresses in the Bcc field:
   1. Results in Mail Header after Send: email sent To: email address put in the To field and Bcc: two email addresses put in the bcc field
   2. Results of Received: 3 emails received correctly as specified
4. Put one email address in the To field, One email address in the Cc field, and one email address in the Bcc field:
   1. Results in Mail Header after Send: email sent To: email address put in the To field, Cc: email address put in the Cc field, and Bcc: email address put in the bcc field
   2. Results of Received: 3 emails received correctly as specified

I started this thread about a very serious Microsoft problem on May 18, 2016 after I first noticed the problem happening to me. This problem was extremely significant because it allowed people’s bcc email addresses to be seen by others who shouldn’t have had access to that information, and it hurt some people’s businesses because it was a violation of trust and confidentiality those businesses had promised to their clients.

I and many others are thoroughly thrilled that Microsoft has finally fixed the problem (in my opinion), and I would like to share a few thoughts with you.

1. First and foremost, I gratefully commend ZigZag3143 (MS-MVP), a MVP Insider Community Moderator, for taking actions outside the box to escalate this problem to someone in the Microsoft community on July 16, 2016. I do not know if that is what finally got Microsoft to take a look at this problem, but I do know that action certainly had to have some positive impact.
2. I thank you and your staff for quickly investigating this problem after you acknowledged it on October 3, 2016 and fixing it as of October 26, 2016. But, it should not have taken that long to identify and fix something this serious that violated RFC compliant email protocols.
3. Your statement, “We will also look at how this issue could have been escalated sooner.” is SO IMPORTANT and I hope you truly do find a solution to address that situation. Every time I tried to report this problem through normal free channels at Microsoft, the Microsoft support personnel told me I had to pay a fee to communicate with Microsoft support personnel or I needed to use this forum to resolve my issues for free. I and others shouldn’t have to pay money to report a serious problem to Microsoft. Microsoft should be thanking us for trying to help you when we find a serious problem. It is very apparent that Microsoft personnel are not monitoring these community forums for serious problems that should be escalated and resolved quickly (it took almost 5 months for you to finally acknowledge this serious problem and start working on a fix). I suggest two things:
   1. Assign Microsoft personnel to actively monitor these community forums so they can quickly analyze whether or not something should be investigated further by the Microsoft development team. If that Microsoft person agrees that there is a significant issue, then post a message or update on the forum, like you did, letting forum participants know what Microsoft is doing about the problem. These forums could be an excellent two-way dialog for Microsoft to assure confidence that a major problem is being investigated.
   2. Apparently, the Microsoft community forum moderators don’t have an active channel to Microsoft support personnel to escalate matters they feel are serious problems. That should be changed immediately. Yes, they might be volunteers. But, some of them are invaluable with their expertise. Provide specific high-quality community moderators the ability to communicate directly with Microsoft support personnel so problems like this one can be investigated and corrected sooner.

I thank you for getting involved and hopefully making some positive changes in the future that enhance the benefit of these community forums. I await your final post to this thread stating that Microsoft has fixed the problem from your viewpoint and mentioning any helpful comments to all the users reading this thread.

Please contact me if you would like to discuss anything further.