Send Bulk Emails with PowerShell using Only BCC

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Sometimes we want to blind copy (BCC) a group of users into an email, without specifying the To address.  In this blog post we find a solution to send bulk emails with PowerShell using only BCC.

In an earlier post we discussed how to send an email using PowerShell.  This approach used the Send-MailMessage cmdlet and even ventured into sending an email using Outlook with voting buttons!

The issue with using the Send-MailMessage cmdlet is that the To field is mandatory.  You cannot just specify the BCC field.  And this is problematic when we want to send bulk emails.

The solution is to use the System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient.

[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 'Tls,TLS11,TLS12'

$From = "Alkane User <xxx@alkanesolutions.co.uk>"
$Subject = "Alkane Subject" 
$Body = "<html><head></head><body><p>This is a HTML email.</p></body></html>"
$SmtpServer = "mail.alkanesolutions.co.uk"
$SmtpPort = 587

#create a MailMessage object with only Bcc
$MailMessage = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage
$MailMessage.From = $From
$MailMessage.IsBodyHtml = $true

#Add BCC addresses
$MailMessage.Bcc.Add("example1@wherever.com")
$MailMessage.Bcc.Add("example2@wherever.com")

$MailMessage.Subject = $Subject
$MailMessage.Body = $Body

#create a SmtpClient object
$SmtpClient = New-Object System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient
$SmtpClient.Host = $SmtpServer
$SmtpClient.Port = $SmtpPort
$SmtpClient.EnableSsl = $true

#create credentials to authenticate
$secpasswd = ConvertTo-SecureString "PasswordHere" -AsPlainText -Force
$cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ("xxx@alkanesolutions.co.uk", $secpasswd)
$SmtpClient.Credentials = $cred

#send the email
$SmtpClient.Send($MailMessage)

#dispose of the MailMessage and SmtpClient objects
$MailMessage.Dispose()
$SmtpClient.Dispose()

The SMTPClient class in PowerShell enables us to specify the BCC field without specifying the To field.  Similarly to the Send-MailMessage cmdlet, we can also use it to send HTML emails, add attachments, specify a port and more.

Send an Email Using PowerShell

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I often write administrative scripts and am required to send an email using PowerShell.  There are a couple of ways to do this depending on our objectives.  If we just require an email then I opt to use the Send-MailMessage PowerShell cmdlet.  However if the email requires voting buttons, we can also utilise the Outlook.Application com object.

Note – if you want to blind copy (BCC) people in to an email without specifying the To field, read how to send bulk emails with PowerShell using only BCC.

Send an Email Using PowerShell and Send-MailMessage

$MailMessage = @{ 
    To = "Example <example@alkanesolutions.co.uk>"
    Bcc = "Example1 <example1@alkanesolutions.co.uk>", "Example2 <example2@alkanesolutions.co.uk>"
    From = "Example3 <example3@alkanesolutions.co.uk>"
    Subject = "Example Subject" 
    Body = "This is an <b>example</b> HTML email." 
    Smtpserver = "mail.smtp.co.uk" 
    Port = 25    
    UseSsl = $false
    BodyAsHtml = $true
    ErrorAction = "Stop" 
} 

Send-MailMessage @MailMessage

Send an Email Using PowerShell and Outlook.Application with Voting

In this example, we use the Outlook.Application COM object and the VotingOptions method to specify voting options (separated by semi-colons).

$outlookComObject = New-Object -ComObject Outlook.Application
$NewMail = $outlookComObject.CreateItem(0)
$NewMail.Subject = "Example Subject"
$HTMLBody = "This is an <b>example</b> HTML email."
$NewMail.HTMLBody = $HTMLBody
#You will need the relevant permissions to send on behalf of
#$NewMail.SentOnBehalfOfName = "Example <example@alkanesolutions.co.uk>"
$NewMail.To = "Example1 <example1@alkanesolutions.co.uk>"
$newmail.Bcc = "Example2 <example2@alkanesolutions.co.uk>;Example3 <example3@alkanesolutions.co.uk>" 
$NewMail.VotingOptions="Yes;No"
$NewMail.Send()