Screenshot: MS Office 2007 in midst of an “eMail Merge”

One of my favorite bulk email programs recently put me in an embarrassing spot–it sent multiple copies (20-70) of an important email out to 300+ people. I was surprised. Fairlogic’s Worldcast–free for educators–had never failed me before. However, once the feedback started rolling in, and after trying it a few times again, I realized I wasn’t going to be using Worldcast again.

But the need I have for sending out custom messages to district staff is still there. What to do? Since I’ve been spending a lot of time on my Windows computer at work, I decided to pursue a suggestion one of my teammates had–use MS Office and Outlook to send messages. I was a bit reluctant, not realizing that MS Office 2007 (and earlier versions, too) now has Mail Merge to Email. Wow! How could I have missed that?

So, I sat down to watch my teammate walk me through the Mail merge process to email. A few minutes ago, I sent out 270 emails sharing a new Virtual Learner Series (VLS) course. There were only a few essential elements to set up:

1. Data source – this was an export out of Filemaker Pro to an XLS document with a list of all the people I’d be bulk emailing.
2. Email to send out – this was the email I wrote to the people on my list

Once that was done, it was fun to watch the Mail Merge take action, sending emails directly to Outlook Outbox and out to the world!

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure