Forward email

What happens to attachments, CC, and BCC when you forward

Forwarding isn't the same as replying, and the difference matters more than you'd think.

When you reply, you're writing back to whoever sent the message. When you forward, you're handing the entire thing, sender included, to someone new. And unlike a reply, a forward automatically carries over any attachments from the original message. That PDF the client sent? It travels with the forward, no re-attaching required.

CC and BCC work a little differently here. If you forward a message, you choose the new recipients yourself. The original CC and BCC lists don't carry over. So if you want your manager looped in quietly, you BCC them fresh on the forward. Nobody else on the new thread sees that.

One more thing worth knowing: the original sender has no idea you forwarded their email. There's no notification, no trace on their end. That's useful and occasionally worth remembering before you forward something you probably shouldn't.

Forwarding vs. sharing a link

Forwarding is fine for a one-off. But if you need three people weighing in on the same client email over the course of a week? Forwarding gets messy fast. Everyone's replying to their own copy, and now there are four versions of the same conversation floating around with no single source of truth. 

This is where Spark's approach differs a bit. Instead of forwarding a copy, Spark's Teams feature lets you share the original email or thread directly with your team, so everyone sees live updates and can discuss it in place rather than managing five forked copies of one conversation. Spark also lets you generate a link for others to comment on, though that's newer and less widely known; shared threads are the more familiar route.

Not every email needs that. But if you're the type who forwards the same client thread to three people every week, it's worth the switch.

How to forward an email

In Gmail: 

1. Open the email you want to forward.
2. At the bottom of the message, click Forward.
3. Add your recipients and a note if you want one.
4. Click Send.

In Outlook:

1. Open the message.
2. Select Forward (or the forward icon in the message pane).
3. Add recipients, add a note.
4. Click Send.

In Spark:

1. Open the email.
2. Select Forward from the toolbar or message menu.
3. Add recipients and your note.
4. Hit Send.

Steps can shift slightly by device and app version. If yours doesn't match, Gmail's help center and Microsoft's support page keep current, platform-specific instructions.

When forwarding is the wrong tool

Forwarding a single message to a single person? Perfectly fine, do it as often as you need. But watch for two patterns. 

If you're forwarding the same category of email to the same person every time it lands (invoices to accounting, say), that's not a forwarding habit. That's a job for automatic forwarding, where a rule handles it without you touching a thing.

And if you're forwarding to loop someone into an ongoing conversation rather than handing off a single message, a shared link keeps everyone on one version instead of scattering copies across four inboxes. Worth asking yourself which one you're actually doing before you hit forward again.

Related terms

• Automatic forwarding
• Focused inbox
• Attachment
• Email client