Sending Multiple Emails from Access

[AndyWilcock]

My previously Contact DB in Access xp (haha) is used mailto: BUT the string length restricted it from sending more than 200 ish chrs of Email Addresses: So I ended up creating 3 - 4 emails with a batch of email addresses in each one. Our admin then had to copy the email text to each email.

My new version in Access - sends the mailing list to WORD to create a Mail Merge and then send the Emails that way.
BUT I can't find a way to add Email Attachments in a WORD Mail Merge ????
I've put a lot into this - marco's in Word to have the email and Mail Merge automatically set up for our admin. And then I find you can't add attachments grrr


It seams whatever way I try, MS is just not up to the job.

We are not talking about a lot of Recipients maybe 70 at most in any mail shot

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated......

Thank you so much

Andy Wilcock

 

[Gasman]

I have never sent emails to that many people, but my first thought would be a Contact Group?
So you can create one on the fly if the list changes regularly?

https://www.datanumen.com/blogs/quickly-create-contact-group-recipient-list-email-outlook-vba/

HTH

 

[Minty]

In current versions of Access a string (the BCC Field for instance) can be around 64000 characters long, so it sounds as if you are maybe trying to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut by going out to a word mail merge.

Using outlook automation you can easily manage Attachments as well.

Have a look at the Similar Threads list below this thread for some ideas.
If that doesn't help or you need further assistance post up what you have tried here.

 

[isladogs]

I've often used CDO to send a group email to large numbers of users within an organisation.
For example, I've used it to send emails for all 200+ school staff and even on occasions a group email to all students without any issues.

However, I wouldn't attempt to use Access to send an external group email from my business or personal accounts to a large number of people / organisations. There are several reasons for this mainly related to spam.
Most email servers limit (throttle) the number of emails that can be sent within a certain time interval as bulk email is one characteristic of spammers. To get around this, you can do code to send them in batches but it can become a PITA to do so.

Instead, if you have a genuine need to send bulk email, I would suggest you purchase a commercial application designed to manage that.
In the past, I used SamLogic Multimailer Professional and it did everything I needed. I'm sure other similar programs exist but that's the only one I tried.
However, as I haven't had a need to do this for at least 5 years, I'm certainly no expert in doing this now.

 

[Isaac]

I agree with others comment the word mail merge doesn't sound like the best tool to handle this, the To or BCC fields ought to handle 70 email addresses, but if they can't, consider doing batches

 

[Cronk]

I've done batches of 300. Otherwise there are commercial options available.

 

[DanielSanders]

I made several mailers, totally with vba, no mail merge needed and no grouping. Attachement is no problem. What kind do you want to send a pdf?

 

[AndyWilcock]

Thank you so much guys - went with Mailto: with a long string of emails. Seems to be working!!

 

[Minty]

Don't forget that everyone you are sending to can see everyone else's email address when you do this.
Fine if they are all in one company, not so good if they don't want their email address shown to the rest of the recipients. (Which I wouldn't outside of internal email).

This is why you should always use the BCC sending option.

 

[AndyWilcock]

Yep I'm using BCC - One concern though is that this still transfers all these emails from the Database to Outlook/gmail depending on how Mailto: is set up.
So the Admin staff sending the emails still now has the complete list of emails from the original email.

which could be a Data Protection issue

Any thoughts......

 

[Minty]

No way around that unless you don't send from their accounts, if they send it, they can see who they sent it to.

If you used CDO and another account they don't have access to, then it wouldn't be visible to anyone except the someone with access to that account.

 

[AndyWilcock]

No way around that unless you don't send from their accounts, if they send it, they can see who they sent it to.

If you used CDO and another account they don't have access to, then it wouldn't be visible to anyone except the someone with access to that account.

Oooo, I didn't know about CDO - Looks interesting! I'm off to do some reading.

 

[isladogs]

I mentioned CDO in post #4
I have an example app you can use for testing the email settings: CDO EMail Tester. It includes a Help file which you may need to refer to