I just had a quick call with a friend of mine who's the Founder of a very popular conference, and his assistant. They wanted to pick my brain on an email issue they're having. I came up empty-handed, and the solution they want may not exist, but I thought I'd post here and see if any of you bright folks now the answer.

He wants his assistant to be able to have access to his email and handle some of it for him. He wants to continue getting all the email sent to him, but be able to see what she's replied to and any email exchanges she's having on his behalf. Essentially, she needs to screen his email, while he sits on the backburner and watches and listens and jumps in if need be.

It needs to happen like this:

Email is sent to him, and is sent to her via a forwarder --> she replies for him, but he sees the reply just to be informed (the second part here is where the trouble is - can this be automated?)

The issue they're running into is this: neither in Outlook, nor in Gmail, does this second part automatically happen. For him to get a copy of any emails sent automatically, she would need to BCC him on everything, or log into his Outlook account and send as him that way. Not the solution they're looking for as they want it to happen automatically, and they want her to have her own email account to manage things with and not have to log into his Outlook with his password, etc.

Is there any way in Outlook, or Gmail, for him to automatically see all communication she sends on his behalf? Or is there another solution to accomplish the same thing (she being the primary email contact, and he just getting copies of everything)?

There may be no answer. That's OK. Just wanted to check.

Thank you!!

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Lisa Morosky
VAforBloggers.com

You can set up a rule to send him a CC of the message. You will need to assign the messages to a category - i.e. clients to boss. Then set up the rule that any message sent in this category gets a CC to your clients email. It will not send him a BCC but it will give him a copy so that he can keep up on the conversation.

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Lee Drozak
My Office Assistant

I would definitely be using a "create rule" for this. Rules can cover most situations. I personally have a rule that makes any emails sent to my multiple email addresses (internal and external eg: hotmail etc) to be received into a specific folder within Outlook.

She would need to set up the rule from her end first stating any emails that are forwarded to her are assigned to a category (blue, red etc - this category is only used for his forwarded emails), then another rule stating that any email she sends on his behalf that is from that category is CC'd to him. Therefore the rule would read as follows in Outlook -

1. Apply the rule after sending message
2. Assigned to (blue or whatever colour she has his emails categorised as) category
3. And on this machine only
4. CC to his email address.

If he has an forwarder on his email address, she would need to put a code or something in the subject box so that he can add a rule stating any email received from her with that code does not get forwarded.

Confused??? It's a bit hard to explain but with a little testing and playing around I usually find the Rule Creation is a great tool to have and use.

Hope this helps.

Thank you both for taking the time to reply. I forwarded both replies to him. Hopefully it helps.

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Lisa Morosky
VAforBloggers.com

If they're open to either Outlook or Gmail, would they be open to Thunderbird? That's Mozilla's free email application (creators of Firefox).

From what I've seen, you can do outgoing CCs in Outlook & Gmail through rules/filters/forwarding (like the others have mentioned), but so far it looks like BCCs involve adding plugins or extra coding or macros.

But it's pretty easy to automate bcc's in outgoing emails in Thunderbird. The only thing is it will add the bcc to all emails sent from that particular account. She could set up a new email account that is just to handle that client's email and run it through Thunderbird. I use both Outlook and Thunderbird on my computer and there are no conflicts.

Anyway, if they're interested - to set up Thunderbird to automate bcc's you go into Tools and Account Settings. Along the left shows the email account(s) - click on "Copies and Folders". Then under "When sending messages, automatically:" fill in the "Bcc these email addresses" box with her client's email address.

Deb

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Deb at Ivy Freelance
Metrics, Marketing and Macros