Sending Email to ALL email addresses when Multiple Contacts select

[Blake]

When in list view (and a single contact record selected), or even when you
have a single contact record open, when you click the "New Message To
Contact" button, or when you menu Actions -> Create -> New Message To
Contact", outlook automatically generates a new email message that has ALL
available email addresses (EMAIL1, EMAIL2, EMAIL3, etc.) in the TO box.
Perfect.

But, when you have multiple contacts/records selected, and do the same
thing, Outlook only populates the TO: box with the EMAIL1 addresses, and
disregards EMAIL2, EMAIL3, etc.

I manage a ton of contacts, many in different categories, groups, etc. . .
'just' like it's designed, right? But when, say i want to "Email everyone,
using ALL available email addresses (work, home, personal, etc.), there is NO
way to do this? I've searched, dug around, tried different methods, but
cannot find anyway to do this.

IMO, this totally devalidates the whole purpose of using Outlook to manage
large or multiple groups of contacts. I'm using OL2007 (w/o biz contact
manager)

 

[Blake]

Bump . . . before it quickly sinks to page 3.

I'd really appreciate some feedback on this as I know i'm not the only one
who finds this shortcoming (if it truly is) a bit frustrating.

 

[Jerry Mills]

Blake,
Have you looked at the Mail Merge function under the tools menu? That would
allow you to select specific contacts then click Tools / Mail Merge and
choose email merge. Other than that, the only other way I know is to create
distribution lists. This of course is most useful if you email the same
group of people over and over. Hope this helps...

Jerry

 

[Blake]

Thanks Jerry,

Forgive me, but there is no mail merge function. I'm using OL2007 withOUT
business contact manager. From the look in the help, it appears that mail
merging functions relate to Biz Contact Mgr?? I'm very familar with Word
Mail Merge, etc. but not with OL, nor can i find it.

I've toyed with Distribution lists, but it's just not functional enough:

1. My list is over 300 contacts and about 400 email addresses. I will have
to manually add every single person. And, again to the shortcomings of MS,
when adding names, there is no way to simply search or filter all "Category =
XXX" and am limited strictly by typing "name". My entires contact database
is near 2000 records, so it will likely take a good few hours to manually go
through the list, (I.e. print out, cross off each as i add them, etc.) and
ensure it's right - manually.

2. Further, and worse, the distrubution list only links a particular email
address, not to a particular record/contact. Good if you get them all right
first off, but it doesn't track all available contact's email addresses as
you add new ones. In other words, if you later add Joe Smith's email2, the
distrubtion list won't recognize this. If you change Joe Smith's email1,
then distrubtion list will recognize the change and you'll be good (of
course, if you recall to "refresh" the list.) I would have to a) update the
contact by adding email2, then b) update distrubtion list to add email2 to
it. Totally against the entire philosophy of using a single CRM.

My 300/400 list is my largest (I'm the alumni rep for our college
classmates, so many users have many addresses, etc.) but i have 3 other
"groups" that i need to do this too. I already have custom list views in
contacts to fileter down my specific groups (I have them assigned to specific
categories, and the custom views filter down to = those categories) I need
to be able to select my filtered view, select all, and simply hit "Email All"
and get it too all available email addresses. Is this too much to ask?
(Sorry, frustrated after years of fighting my "lists")

It's obviously a shortcoming and frustrating - as I mentioned, when you have
a single contact and hit "Create Email" it pulls all available addresses, but
when multiple selected, it uses only EMAIL1.

Does anyone know if it works properly when the BCM is installed/running?

Thanks again,
Blake

 

[Jerry Mills]

Are you in your contact folder when you click on Tools? I am referring to
Outlook 2007 and I do not have or use the business contact manager, just a
straight install of Outlook 2007. It is an option in mine. Do you have
Office 2007 installed with Word 2007 available to you? If not, that is
probably why you are not seeing a mail merge option.

I have seen Outlook evolve since Outlook 97 and can tell you that this
software was never intended to be used as a "full fledged" contact manager.
It is email software that was originally designed to work with Exchange.
Microsoft had to first improve it to work as an Internet mail client and
then has been slowly improving it's features. It took me until version 2003
to finally pull away from Outlook Express for my internet mail client. It
has improved significantly from one version to the next but still has some
shortcomings in tying everything together. I'm not a big expert on contact
managers, but from what you describe as your tasks, you might be better
served by looking at Goldmine or ACT which I know ties into Outlook. I'm
not sure what might be available in the freeware market that will also do
what you are looking for. Good Luck...

Jerry