Can't Edit Merged Emails--Help!

M

martha

I need to send out several hundred emails where the first paragraph of
each email is slightly different and personalized to the recipient. I
wrote a document in Word 2004 and merged it with Entourage 2004 as an
HTML email. It merges them directly to the outbox. (I did it as an HTML
email so that I could have underlined and bolded text, as well as
highlighted links.) Only problem, I cannot edit these documents no
matter what I do. I've tried saving them as drafts, but they are still
uneditable. It makes no sense to me! Any ideas how I can fix this bug
or easily get around this problem? I have various merged fields
throughout the document, so a simple cut-and-paste solution won't work.
Thanks!
 
B

Barry Wainwright

I need to send out several hundred emails where the first paragraph of
each email is slightly different and personalized to the recipient. I
wrote a document in Word 2004 and merged it with Entourage 2004 as an
HTML email. It merges them directly to the outbox. (I did it as an HTML
email so that I could have underlined and bolded text, as well as
highlighted links.) Only problem, I cannot edit these documents no
matter what I do. I've tried saving them as drafts, but they are still
uneditable. It makes no sense to me! Any ideas how I can fix this bug
or easily get around this problem? I have various merged fields
throughout the document, so a simple cut-and-paste solution won't work.
Thanks!
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, what you want to do is not possible at this time. Entourage
has only very limited 'built in' HTML editing capabilities. This means that
the HTML generated in Word is beyond the capabilities of the HTML editor in
Entourage.
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

Unfortunately, what you want to do is not possible at this time. Entourage
has only very limited 'built in' HTML editing capabilities. This means that
the HTML generated in Word is beyond the capabilities of the HTML editor in
Entourage.
Click to expand...

If you're doing it in HTML purely for formatting the text, as you say, (bold
and underlined text), you can just do that in Entourage. Entourage does that
sort of "rich text" HTML just fine. The URL links will be OK too. But you
can't do an individualized email merge within Entourage.

The only thing I can think of would be if there was a way to enter the text
that needs to be individualized into one of the fields Word's Data Merge
Manager will merge. They're not many of those, unfortunately. But if you
could give up, say, the Fax field in Entourage for these bits of text and
merge Fax field into your Form letter in Word, you might be able to work
around this limitation.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
M

martha

That solution won't work. I need to be able to rewrite an entire
sentence or two. I just can't believe a merged email is uneditable!
This is insane! Any other ideas? If I cut-and-paste into a new
document, I lose all formatting (the underline and bold) and have to
type in the email address and subject line. This is not an efficient
solution for hundreds of emails that need to go out.
 
Top