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How to Add a CC Field in Contact Form 7

By ali 4 min read

How to add a CC email field in Contact Form 7 using the Additional Headers setting

Contact Form 7 is a popular WordPress plugin that allows you to create and manage contact forms. By default, you can configure email notifications to send form submissions to a specific email address.

But what if you want to send a copy of the submitted form email to another recipient? You can do this by adding a CC (Carbon Copy) field to your Contact Form 7 form.

Contact Form 7 supports additional email headers, so you don’t need another plugin or complicated PHP code to add this functionality.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to add a CC email field and configure it to send a copy of each form submission to the specified email address.

1. Install and Activate Contact Form 7

First, make sure that the Contact Form 7 plugin is installed and activated on your WordPress website.

If you haven’t installed it yet, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Plugins → Add New Plugin.
  3. Search for Contact Form 7.
  4. Click Install Now and then Activate.

You can also download it from the official Contact Form 7 plugin page.

2. Edit Your Contact Form

Once Contact Form 7 is activated, open the form where you want to add the CC field.

  1. Go to your WordPress dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Contact → Contact Forms.
  3. Select the contact form you want to edit.
  4. Open the Form tab in the form editor.

Now you can add a new email field to collect the CC recipient’s email address.

3. Add the CC Email Field

Place the following code in your Contact Form 7 form editor wherever you want the CC field to appear:

<label>CC Email
[email* your-email-cc]
</label>

This creates a required email field where visitors can enter the email address that should receive a copy of the notification.

Here is what the field does:

  • email creates an email input field.
  • * makes the field required.
  • your-email-cc is the mail-tag used to access the submitted email address.

If you want the CC field to be optional, remove the asterisk:

[email your-email-cc]

4. Configure the Contact Form 7 Mail Settings

After adding the CC field, you need to configure the Mail settings so Contact Form 7 knows where to send the email copy.

  1. Open the Mail tab in the Contact Form 7 editor.
  2. Check the To field and enter the main recipient’s email address.
  3. Find the Additional Headers field.
  4. Add the following header:
Cc: [your-email-cc]

Contact Form 7 will replace [your-email-cc] with the email address submitted in the CC field.

For example, your Mail settings might look like this:

To:

admin@example.com

Additional Headers:

Cc: [your-email-cc]

In this example, the main notification goes to admin@example.com, and the address entered in the CC field receives a copy of the same email.

Make sure the mail-tag used in the Additional Headers field exactly matches the field name in your form.

5. Save and Test Your Contact Form

Once you have added the CC field and configured the Mail settings, click Save to update your form.

Now test the form to make sure the CC functionality works correctly.

  1. Open the page containing your contact form.
  2. Enter the required information.
  3. Enter a valid email address in the CC Email field.
  4. Submit the form.
  5. Check the main recipient’s inbox.
  6. Check the CC recipient’s inbox to confirm that a copy was received.

If the CC recipient does not receive the email, check the Contact Form 7 Mail settings and make sure the mail-tag is correct. Also check your website’s email delivery configuration and spam folders.

Important Notes

  • Use an email form-tag such as [email your-email-cc] rather than a plain text field.
  • Use Cc: [your-email-cc] in the Additional Headers field.
  • The CC recipient receives a copy of the email, and their address is visible to the other email recipients.
  • Use BCC instead of CC if you do not want other recipients to see the copied email address.
  • For reliable email delivery, configure SMTP on your WordPress website if your hosting environment does not deliver emails consistently.

For more details, refer to the official Contact Form 7 Mail settings documentation.

Conclusion

Adding a CC field in Contact Form 7 is simple. You only need to create an email field in your form and add its mail-tag to the Additional Headers section using the Cc: header.

This allows you to send a copy of each form submission to another email address without installing an additional plugin or writing custom PHP code.

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