With the course email tool, you can send messages from your course to course members' external email accounts without the need to switch to your email provider, such as Gmail or Yahoo. You can send emails to individual users or to groups of users.
Email is a send-only tool. You don't receive emails in Blackboard Learn.
Watch a video about sending email in Blackboard Learn
The following narrated video provides a visual and auditory representation of some of the information included on this page. For a detailed description of what is portrayed in the video, open the video on YouTube, navigate to More actions, and select Open transcript.
Video: Send Email shows how to use the Send Email tool.
When you send email from your course, the recipients receive it in their external email accounts, such as BobSmith@yahoo.com. Replies go to your email account, not to the course. You may want to set up a filter or message rule to easily group your course email into a single folder in your personal inbox.
Blackboard Learn keeps no record of sent or received emails. Keep a copy of important messages in your inbox in case you need them later.
You can send email to these users or groups in a course:
- All Users: Sends email to all users in the course.
- All Groups: Sends email to all of the groups in a specified course.
- All Teaching Assistant Users: Sends email to all of the Teaching Assistants in a specified course.
- All Student Users: Sends an email to all students in the course.
- All Instructor Users: Sends email to all of the instructors for a specified course.
- Select Users: Sends email to select users.
- Select Groups: Sends email to select groups.
Your instructor decides which groups in your course you can email. Recipients of each email won't see the email addresses of other recipients.
Send an email
Blackboard Learn won't recognize files or email addresses with spaces or special characters, such as #, &, %, and $. In general, use only alphanumeric file names and addresses in Blackboard Learn.
Don't send email through Blackboard Learn without a subject line. A blank subject line blank can prevent the message from being delivered.
Find the email tool for all of your courses through the Tools panel on the My Institution tab. Your instructor can also add a link to the email tool directly to the course menu.
- From the course menu, select Tools > Send Email.
- On the Select Users or Select Groups page, select the recipients in the Available to Select box and select the right-pointing arrow to move them into the Selected box. Use the left arrow to move a user out of the recipient list. Select Invert Selection and the selected users are no longer highlighted and those users that weren't selected will be highlighted.
To select multiple users in a list on a Windows machine, press the Shift key and select the first and last users. To select users out of sequence, press the Ctrl key and select each user needed. For Macs, use the Command key instead of the Ctrl key. You can also use the Select All function to send an email to all users.
- Type your Subject and Message.
- Select Attach a File to browse for files from your computer. You can attach multiple files. After you add one file, the option to attach another file appears.
- Select Submit.
The system will send you a copy of the message. A receipt page appears after the message is sent listing all recipients. This page doesn't confirm that users received the message, just that the message was sent.
Troubleshooting
- Your email address isn't visible unless you choose to make it visible to course members. Find this setting in the page header in the My Blackboard menu > Settings > Personal Information > Set Privacy Options. On this page, you can choose the information you want course members to see.
- Change your preferred external email address here: My Blackboard > Settings > Personal Information > Edit Personal Information.
- Email clients, such as Gmail or Yahoo, may identify email from Blackboard Learn as junk mail. If you have problems, check your preferences or options for junk mail settings.