Emailing Publisher Newsletter using Excel email addresses?????

[AIRAM]

We have a 2-pg. Newsletter created in Publisher 2003. We have an Excel
document with over 700 of our client's email addresses. We would "somehow"
like to send the Newsletter to all of our clients, not as an attachment, but
as part of their email message. It was saved as Web Page file type so that
the Newsletter would open a new Brower screen in order to view it.

We do not want all 700+ email addresses to be shown on the TO portion of the
email. We want each email address on our Excel chart to get its own
Newsletter. There should be no message in the body of the email, only the
2-pg. Newsletter.

We haven't been formally trained in Publisher 2003, Word 2003 or Excel 2003,
but we have spent countless hours on trying to figure out how to merge our
Excel email addresses with our Publisher Newsletter and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

We see a place in Publisher to create an email list, but with over 700 email
addresses, that would take forever. We would like to somehow merge or import
the email addresses already saved in Excel to finish our project.

We have tried multiple different ways (Word 2003, Word Perfect 12, Excel,
Publisher) and have reached DEAD ENDS. We are not proficient enough in
Microsoft Access to attempt this project.

Can someone please let us know if we can accomplish this project with Word,
Excel or Publisher? Without paying someone else to do it or by taking a
formal Publisher class this weekend! We don't have the time! Thank
You!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[JoAnn Paules [MSFT MVP]]

1. You can't send out a two page newsletter in a newsletter. It's a one page
deal. There are some work arounds.

2. I personally don't know how to get an email address from Excel to
whatever email program you are using so I can't help you there.

3. <Personal opinion> You're less than sane to send out one email to 700
recipients. (I didn't want to tell this person they were nuts so I had to
soften it.) Your ISP may not even let you send one email out to that many
people in one shot.

4. There is something that can be done to keep your recipients from seeing
each other's address.

5. There are things you can do, and several of us can help but you have to
help us with something. PLEASE stop using so many exclamation
marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

6. I gotta be honest with you about something. Your post makes me think you
could be sending unsolicited e-mail. Translation: Spam. I really hate
spam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Extra exclamation points are used in this case to
emphasize how much I hate spam.)

 

[Rob Giordano \(Crash Gordon®\)]

In Excel, select the column that contains only the email addresses Copy to clipboard. Then in your email client Paste them into the BCC...leave To: blank. You may have to manipulate the email addresses in Excel so to add a comma after each one (this should be easy)...before you Paste into BCC.

In Outlook EXPRESS you can just Copy/Paste your Publisher Newsletter but you can't have two pages, you'd have to redo the Newletter so it is ONE LONG page.

It's considerably more difficult to do this in Outlook as all your image files would have to be stored somewhere on the web, and you'd have to link to them using absolute url links. Much easier to use OE.

You should be able to do this rather quickly.

 

[AIRAM]

Ok JoAnn, I'll stop using so many exclamation points in my post.

Please let me clarify - We are not sending out 700 spam newletters via
email. If we were, we'd buy a program that would do it for us. My office
doesn't have a website yet (it's being designed now by an outside company),
otherwise I think we could just post the newsletter on our website and give
all 700 people the link to view the newsletter.

YOU SAID > 1. You can't send out a two page newsletter in a newsletter. It's
a one page deal. There are some work arounds.
What are some of the work arounds? Why can't we make a 2 pg.
newsletter? We have links to take people to the second page. Is it just that
a 2 pg. newsletter can't be emailed?

YOU SAID > 4. There is something that can be done to keep your recipients
from seeing each other's address.
I don't think putting all 700 email addresses in a BCC would work.
Too many people's email providers would probably reject it as spam.

YOU SAID > 5. There are things you can do, and several of us can help but
you have to > help us with something. PLEASE stop using so many exclamation
marks!!!
Ok, I will. What are some of things we can do?

I can send you a private email to give more details so you won't think we
are trying to get "spam email instructions for free".

 

[JoAnn Paules [MSFT MVP]]

Okay, I feel better about helping you. The latest trend seems to be
sending me spam emails that are pictures so my filters can't pick up on key
words.

1. Publisher cannot do a two page newsletter. You CAN send a newsletter that
is a single page that is actually one page wide and two (or more) pages
long. Another poster here used the website template to create a newsletter
this way..

2. Break your mailing list down into smaller groups. Yes, you will have to
send out the same e-mail x number of times but then you can get past the "I
smell spam" of the ISPs.

Start with those - and someone else may be able to help you with the BCC
issue. If you need additional help, post here. There could be someone else
out there who's struggling with the same issues.

 

[Brian Kvalheim [MSFT MVP]]

AIRAM wrote:

1. Current versions of Publisher do not support multipage email newsletters.
2. Current versions of Publisher do not support email merge

You could use Publisher to create your 2 page newsletter essentially as a
two page website and upload the newsletter each month/week (or whatever
frequency) to your own hosting space with url. Then send an email blast with
the URL to the recipients.

You could use Outlook and it's VBA programming to send out 700 separate
email blasts. Essentially you could open Outlook, go to File > Import > and
import your Excel database of emails (convert the database to CSV in Excel
first) and put them into new contact cards. Then create a script in Outlook
to send an email to each person in that 700 person contact book.

The next version of Publisher looks to help improve web and email
experiences. Hopefully we see this implemented as well.

A side note: As far as your comment goes about the Publisher Address List,
you could import your Excel file into Access, convert to an Access file,
then Publisher can use that file as an address list that can be accessed via
Tools > Mail and Catalog Merge > .....
--
Brian Kvalheim
Microsoft Publisher MVP
http://www.publishermvps.com

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and
confers no rights.

 

[JoAnn Paules [MSFT MVP]]

I knew someone could help with the address list part.