How can I preserve BCC information from iOS Mail?

Question

I just discovered that iOS Mail does not preserve BCC information when you're sending a mail, which is obviously atrocious…

How can I get it do that?

Answer 1

This also occurs with other mail clients on Gmail account.

After a bit of googling, it appears the issue has existed for years, and is likely related to Gmail behaviour with SMTP and IMAP. My guess is that Google create the “Sent Messages” entry from what the SMTP server gets in its DATA command, and discard anything a mail client may want to save through IMAP. Doesn’t seem it will be changed anytime soon.

If this is a rare occurrence, you may want to log into gmail.com when you need to send a message with BCC. If this happens more often, you may want to use the Gmail app or another Gmail specific client.

Answer 2

When viewing the index list of messages in the Sent folder in the viewer pane, as opposed to viewing the headers of an individual message that might be viewable in the preview pane (or standalone window if you had double-clicked on that message), that BCC recipients are not visible in the "To" column of the index list of messages in the Sent folder, even though they are clearly visible in the BCC headers of the actual sent messages themselves.

For that matter, neither will a message's CC recipients be visible if recipients were specified in that message's "To" field. However, a message's CC recipients are visible in the "To" column of the messages list, if the "To" field of that message was blank.

But BCC recipients are never displayed in the "To" column of the index list of messages in the Sent folder, regardless of whether any recipient addresses were specified in the "To" and/or "CC" fields of the specific messages or not.