[Cynthia]

I have an awards letter that I would like to send via email to 150
recipients. My database is an Excel spreadsheet. Is there a way to save the
file and review it before sending the emails?
--
Cynthia

[Peter Jamieson]

Some things to bear in mind:
a. You can never guarantee with email that what you send is what the
recipient sees (they may be using a different email client with
different display options)
b. the only way you will really get some idea of what a recipient sees
will be to send a copy of the email to yourself. What you would see in
any of the word preview options is not a reliable guide to what will be
sent.

So what to do depends on what your review is for.

1. If you just want to check that "the emails" are going to send
approximately what you expect, put your own email address into the data
source (e.g. if possible, have a column called myemail, where every row
has your email address, and specify that column as the destination address.

2. If there can be substantial differences between each email, e.g.
because you are doing different salutations based on the content of the
data source, and you want to check that every email will go out as you
expect, you'd probably need to email yourself a copy of all 150 emails
and check them.

Or maybe you could do (1) to check the approximate layout, then merge
all the rest to a new document to check that the content is at least "on
target".

Using any of those techniques, to modify the content you would need to
go back to the mail merge main document, make the necessary
modifications there, and redo the merge, so if your intention is to be
able to make minor edits (e.g. modify the greeting for people you happen
to know personally, or some such), the technique wouldn't work. You
could do something based on Doug Robbins' VBA code at

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MailMerge/...ttachments.htm

(which is intended for another purpose, but would let you modify the
output of a merge, then send emails that reflected those modifications)

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

Cynthia wrote:
I have an awards letter that I would like to send via email to 150
recipients. My database is an Excel spreadsheet. Is there a way to save the
file and review it before sending the emails?

[Cynthia]

Thank you, Peter!
--
Cynthia


"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Some things to bear in mind:
a. You can never guarantee with email that what you send is what the
recipient sees (they may be using a different email client with
different display options)
b. the only way you will really get some idea of what a recipient sees
will be to send a copy of the email to yourself. What you would see in
any of the word preview options is not a reliable guide to what will be
sent.

So what to do depends on what your review is for.

1. If you just want to check that "the emails" are going to send
approximately what you expect, put your own email address into the data
source (e.g. if possible, have a column called myemail, where every row
has your email address, and specify that column as the destination address.

2. If there can be substantial differences between each email, e.g.
because you are doing different salutations based on the content of the
data source, and you want to check that every email will go out as you
expect, you'd probably need to email yourself a copy of all 150 emails
and check them.

Or maybe you could do (1) to check the approximate layout, then merge
all the rest to a new document to check that the content is at least "on
target".

Using any of those techniques, to modify the content you would need to
go back to the mail merge main document, make the necessary
modifications there, and redo the merge, so if your intention is to be
able to make minor edits (e.g. modify the greeting for people you happen
to know personally, or some such), the technique wouldn't work. You
could do something based on Doug Robbins' VBA code at

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MailMerge/...ttachments.htm

(which is intended for another purpose, but would let you modify the
output of a merge, then send emails that reflected those modifications)

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

Cynthia wrote:
I have an awards letter that I would like to send via email to 150
recipients. My database is an Excel spreadsheet. Is there a way to save the
file and review it before sending the emails?