Entourage and e-mail merge

W

wyanwink

OK, I've seen a couple of other posts on this but no definitive answer.
Has anyone successfully used Entourage, with or without Word, to mail
merge with a subset of the Contacts folder?

There's no way to export a subset of Contacts for use as a data source
in Word or a 3rd party app (tried Intellimerge and Email Merge). It's
too time-consuming to maintain two separate contact lists.

Would like to add some Contacts to a "monthly newsletter" category,
then email out a form letter using just the full name of the contact in
the salutation. Shouldn't be that hard, right?

I've heard talk of Options Query and this Office for Office script. If
anyone has specific experience with this, I'd appreciate hearing about
it.

Thanks,
Ryan
 
D

Daiya Mitchell

OK, I've seen a couple of other posts on this but no definitive answer.
Has anyone successfully used Entourage, with or without Word, to mail
merge with a subset of the Contacts folder?
Click to expand...

Yes. But Entourage is set up to force you to do it in Word. All Entourage
really does in this process is maintain the Office Address Book.

In Word's Help, see the topic "Create form letters by using the Data Merge
Manager". It gives a nice step by step. See also "Distribute merged form
letters as e-mail messages"

Problems you will run into--after selecting the Office Address Book as your
data source, go to the *bottom* of the merge palette to click on Query
Options and select your subset of contacts. Bad location, difficult to
find, makes the process very frustrating.

Your only options in Query Options are individual names or a complete
category, so do set up and assign an appropriate category to your names in
Entourage first.

Post back if more problems arise.

I haven't a clue about the Office for Office script, but would be interested
in a link to explore this option for myself.

Daiya
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

I haven't a clue about the Office for Office script, but would be interested
in a link to explore this option for myself.
Click to expand...

Office for Office was a set of scripts I wrote for Entourage 2001, because
Office 2001 shipped with a "defective" (incomplete) Data Merge Manager in
Word 2001: here was no Query button; you could only merge the entire Office
Address Book! Office for Office let you choose contacts (in Entourage) by
Category or by Selection (selected contacts). It also offered a lot of
options for which field to merge. Someone else (George Clark) also released
another add-on (made in RealBasic) called eQuery to do the same things.
(eQuery was shareware while Office for Office was free.)

When Office v. X came out, it now had a Query button that took care of
things in Data Merge Manager, with a nice user-friendly UI, so I decided not
to update Office for Office for OS X. Mind you, its options for selecting
fields was better than Data Merge Manager's...

--
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.
 
D

Daiya Mitchell

Thanks, Paul.

I hope the original poster has either Office X or 2004, then, or he won't be
very happy with my answer. He didn't say, of course.

Fingers crossed that the next version will beef up mail merge and similar
options for Word and Entourage.

Daiya
 
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