How in the Tech

Bringing Automatic CC and BCC to Thunderbird

By Adam Myers ⋅ February 18, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Mozilla Thunderbird

The popular open source and free email client Thunderbird, by the same group that brings us Firefox, does not allow for any automation when it comes to using the carbon copy feature. CC and BCC allows the email composer to send a copy of the email to another recipient. Why is this something that you may be interested in automating? In some work environments, perhaps your manager needs to see all a copy of all email correspondence done on your behalf. In a home environment, perhaps you like to keep a second copy of your email at another email address. As a parent, perhaps you would be interested in configuring the BCC – blind carbon copy – to send a copy of all email your child composes. There are many other reasons this may prove useful to you, so here is how you can accomplish it.

1. Download and install the Thunderbird add-on Auto-CC. Auto-CC is an experimental add-on as it has not been fully tested, therefore you are required to register at mozilla.org in order to obtain the download link. Don’t worry, it’s free and the add-on is bug free in my usage.
2. To install the add-on, from within Thunderbird navigate to Tools->Add-ons. Click Install and browse to the locally downloaded add-on from step 1. You’ll have to restart Thunderbird to finish off the installation.



3. Unfortunately, Auto-CC has no graphical interface to configure it by – perhaps that is why it is still marked as experimental. The good news, it’s not overly complicated to configure. In Thunderbird navigate to Tools->Options.



4. From the Options window click on the Advanced tab and then the Config Editor.



5. From Filter drill down to the Auto-CC configuration area by typing auto_cc.



6. You are now presented with four options that can be configured, all of which are pretty self-explanatory.
   • extensions.auto_cc.auto_cc_address: the address you wish to forward to.
   • extensions.auto_cc.send_as_bcc: control whether the forward is CC or BCC, true for BCC.
   • extensions.auto_cc.enabled: toggles Auto-CC on or off.
   • extensions.auto_cc.init_toolbar_button: toggles a button on the Thunderbird toolbar to quickly enable or disable Auto-CC.

Auto-CC fills a void in Thunderbird, though I do recognize it is rather niche. The main downside is that the feature applies across all configured accounts in Thunderbird, and while the toolbar button helps in toggling the functionality, it’s not an ideal solution. Again, maybe this is why it is still an experimental add-on. Worth the hoops? You be the judge.