Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Les. Ferguson — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:55:39 GMT

A first rate article on a feature that I had not used before.

This will come in very handy at Christmas. :-)

Thank You

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Russel — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:23:07 GMT

Just a note...in order to send merged documents in Outlook, you must have the same version of Word installed. You can't send a personalized email with mail merge if you are running Outlook 2007 and Word 2003 (per Microsoft's knowledge base).

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Jae — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:41:04 GMT

Thanks for the instructions on the Mail Merge. This was very helpful.

I have a question, but am not sure if it belongs here or not - but what if in the document you have a table - and you want the subject line to be in the first row of the table and the person to whom you are sending the email message to in the second row - and then in the third cell the personalized message?

And is this possible to do with a template?

-- Jae

jaep2r(at)gmail(dot)com

re: Many thanks.

John-Wayne — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:55:43 GMT

Great! Many thanks!

One of the best tips in this blog.

Troubleshooting Tips

dcapuano — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 03:25:34 GMT

Where can one go to find out troubleshooting tips? I have a issue with Outlook 2007 where it is in an endless send and receive loop. So far.....13244 tasks have completed...... OUCH.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Matthew — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:49:07 GMT

This is cool. I've done this a few times because I didn't want to spring for one of the tools you can buy. Finally, I did buy one. I like "Send Personally" from MapiLabs. It allows you to work entirely inside Outlook and removes some of the complexity. Either way, email merge is a life saver.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Hemant Sathe — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:51:31 GMT

How to do this on your enterprise address book? We often send mails to many of our collegues and want to do the same. These names are not in our contacts but are taken for corporate address book.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

One Executive — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:50:58 GMT

I have Outlook 2007 and Word/ Excel etc 2003 installed on my laptop at work. When I tried I got a message that the version of Word should match that of outlook.

Is this a hard requirement or is there a way of working around it ?

At my company, we have Outlook 2007 for email but we are in process of transitioning to Office 2007 so most computers still have Word / Excel and Powerpoint from Office 2003.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Andrew Rare — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:57:34 GMT

Why is Microsoft hiding these cool features deep down in the menus?

I used a paid software to do this kind of 'mass mailing'.

God damn you Microsoft ;)

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Chad — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:56:48 GMT

What a great feature! I wish I had known about this a long time ago, it sure would have saved me a bunch of time. I will be sure to use this going forward - THANKS!

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Kanayama — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:51:44 GMT

Thanks, but is there any way to handle attachments also?

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

need help — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:01:55 GMT

Is it possible to add an attachment to your email when using mail merge in this way?

Thanks

To Kanayama and need help

Milly Staples - MVP Outlook — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:43:29 GMT

Mail merges cannot send attachments at this time. Perhaps a future version of Outlook will but not at present.

There are third party software solutions that do work with attachments.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Nadine — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:45:30 GMT

Is it possible to request a delivery notification and read receipt when sending emails this way?

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Nancy — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:09:32 GMT

I have MS Office 2007, when in Outlook and I click on Tools I do not have Mail Merge as a choice. What's the scoop on that?

I'm desperate to know. I am finding MS 2007 to be a HUGE burden for many daily functions. Compatibility issues with other co-workers, as well as people in general, clients, vendors, etc.

Please help.

To Nancy -

Milly Staples - MVP Outlook — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:02:02 GMT

When you attempt to use Mail Merge, are you in the Contacts Folder? That is where the mail merge feature lives.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Joanne — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:48:00 GMT

This is great.

I am about to use it, but one thing I cannot find is how to select which email account to use for my emailing if I do not wish to use my default email address.

It uses the default account, which I can deal with by changing my default - but, it would be better to select it as I do the emailing.

Tasks in MS Outlook

KEVINCHICKENHEAD — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 02:33:26 GMT

Greetings!

Is there anyway to add more options in the 'reminders' field of the MS Outlook for 2007.

I have 5 mins, 10 mins.....4 days, 1 week, 2 weeks.

I know this can be done, I just can't find it.

I want to put, 1 month, 5 days, all other sorts of things.

Thanks!

To KevinChickenHead (great name)

Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook] — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:36:08 GMT

Depending on where you are setting the reminder, you can use natural language to set your preferred reminder.

Such as 5d for 5 days, 3h for 3 hours, or christmas for a reminder on December 25. There is a lot of flexibility you can use when setting reminders. It all depends on where you are setting it from.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Joi Williams — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:23:03 GMT

When completing a mail merge with Word/outlook 2003 the final document is missing the headers and footers. What can be done to correct this?

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

mmacbeth — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:01:52 GMT

Joi,

I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to accomplish - Outlook's e-mail does not have headers or footers.

-Melissa

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Lyn bolt — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:09:00 GMT

I am an officer of a club with 900 members. I need to send out email every now and then to them to remind them about club business. I would rather not put all of these people in my contacts folder and I'm not sure this function will work for that many people. Does any have any experience in sending out a mass email like this?

TIA

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Mike — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:58:35 GMT

I used the mail merge in office 2007, both word and outlook are 2007,

Here is my problem;

I created and sent a message to my friends and my own emails in order to check the functionality of this feature.

It look great with no problem on word, however, when I receive the email it's like the correct message has been copied and pasted there twice.

I checked other recipients email and same thing there.

To clarify: recipients receive 1 email which contains the correct message repeated twice.

Is there any solution for that?

Am I doing something wrong? ( which could probably be the case)

Regards,

Mike

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Dan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:44:43 GMT

I have three accounts coming into Outlook - my work, a GMail account, and another POP account which I use for group trips that I plan. Is it possible to select what account your sending from OTHER THAN going to Tools > Account Settings and changing which account you send from by default?

I'd like to keep my work email as my default email, but allow myself to send from my POP account.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Ian Lowe — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:35:25 GMT

It works fine as you describe but is there a way to also include a file attachment into each e-mail?

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Caroline — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:46:20 GMT

I have 3 e-mail addresses that I send and receive from within Outlook. In the same vein as Dan, is it possible to select which e-mail address you send from? I have not been able to figure out how to do so yet.

Can I personalise the Subject field in a mail merge?

Ted — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:58:27 GMT

Can I personalise the Subject field in a mail merge?

Also can I add voting buttons to a mail merge?

The reason for this would be so that when I see the response email from someone, I will also see what was written specifically for them in their subject field. The data I would put in the subject field identifies a specific action that I was supposed to carry out for the recipient. Many recipients will have numerous actions associated with them and I need to be able to track each action individually. Therefore the mail merge will sbe required to send multiple mails to the same recipient with a different subject field entry for each mail (referencing the action). Now that's a confusing paragraph.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

jjenkins@cmcgp.com — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:58:38 GMT

Great feature and a very informative instructional outline. Two questions I have are these:

1. Can we use the enterprise or global address book for the merged contact source?

2. We have an admin assistant who sends out mass mailings for her boss, our CEO, and when we worked with this the mail merge worked great from his contact list but the admin's name was in the from field. Any way to "Send on Behalf" so the CEO's name appears in the email from field?

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

JKVC@UIUC — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:00:32 GMT

You can personalize your emails and add attachments if you first take Outlook offline (under File menu). If you do that before you finish the mail merge, you can avoid having everything go out automatically. Instead it gets sent to the Out box, where you can fiddle with each email individually and add attachments. Then hit "send", and when you go back online (toggle the switch under file menu), everything will go out. Just be sure you do everything you want before going back online, because everything in the out box will go out automatically. Alternatively, you could move the files to Draft box, where they will sit until you are ready to deal with them.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Samuel — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:21:18 GMT

Hello.

Thank you very much for your note, It was very useful and helpful.

Best regards

Samuel

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

delimas — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:48:47 GMT

I have a new task that I need to perform and I am unable to locate the right Outlook plug-in software for this........ On the first of each month, I need to send a personalized b-day email to everyone in my contact list, who has a birthday that month. Do you know of anything out there that can automactially generate mail by Contact 'field' (DOB)? Thank you, Sharon

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

5467 — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:20:56 GMT

Any one can help on the 2 ponits below

- How to specify which account i want to use to send this merge mail while i have mutiple account in my outlook, can i change to not use the default one?

- Can i have the vote button in the merge mail without editing the messages individually ?

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Chelsea — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:15:59 GMT

Thanks this was exactly what I needed! On the Microsoft website there are companies that advertise for you to buy add-on software that does this same thing.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Segun — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:59:17 GMT

Handling Attachments

As earlier noted, Outlook does not appear to offer this functionality. However an add on to Outlook - Business Contact Manager - does and is much more efficient a tool for mail merges. It comes with Office 2007 Pro and may be available as a seperate dowmload from Microsoft.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

pmtate — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:59:34 GMT

Useful blog.

We use BCM (OL2007), is there anyway to include the Title in the Greeting line, it doesn't seem to be an available field in the mailmerge or match fields option.

Paul

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Ellen Colangelo — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:20:43 GMT

With Outlook 2003, I was able to select my contacts for a mail merge to print envelopes or labels. I have not been able to accomplish this with Outlook 2007. I have to mail merge in Word and then select my outlook contacts. I am unable to use customized merge fields (they don't show up on the list) doing it this way- I could do it with Outlook 2003. Any suggestions?

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Stephanie — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:16:24 GMT

This is really excellent. One question - can you attach attachments to the email being merged?

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Suzanne — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:39:01 GMT

This is very helpful. I do have one other question. I frequently need to send a mass (welcome) email out to new chamber members that are not in my address book. And I really don't need to put them in that. Is there a way to enter addresses into the mail merge TO section that are NOT in your contacts? Thanks.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Leslie Durschinger — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:49:06 GMT

This is great, but how do I manage all the bounched emails. I have them all in a mail folder and would like to compare them to the orginal contract list to see which bounched?

Thanks

Leslie

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Paradigit — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:45:43 GMT

Why isn't this article at the TOP of the list when you look for online help. It is perfect, all the HOW TO DO should be like this one, with pictures; the show me feature is the best THANKS. It worked with no problems.

re: Mail Merge: How to send a personalized e-mail to many people at once

Cathy — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 04:30:13 GMT

The process works great; however, is there a way to specify which email account we prefer to use to send the message? Currently I have multiple accounts linked to Outlook and the main email is the one it keeps selecting. However, I need the messages to come from my other Outlook email account. Please help.

Thanks,

Cathy