The tools listed on this page are used for sending mail to multiple recipients, including mail merge. The utilities can be used for sending newsletter and other bulk mail and many can be configured to slowly send messages if your ISP limits the number of messages you can send in a time period.
While Microsoft Outlook supports mail merge, it does not support merging attachments with the message. You'll need to either use one of the mail merge tools on this page (most support including attachments in the merged message) or use VBA.
I have Add attachments and set email fields during a mail merge to email, which adds attachments and sets other fields (like Importance) when the message is sent and Microsoft Word MVP Doug Robbins wrote the Mail Merge to E-mail with Attachments code sample using Word VBA to create a mail merge with attachments.
Additional pages of mail tools are listed under More Information.
Tools in the Spotlight
Easy Mail Merge for Outlook gives you the power to fully personalize email messages and quickly deliver individual emails to your contacts list, being the perfect solution for your mail merge needs, such as personalizing email newsletters, business announcements, marketing emails or any other emails that need to be customized and individually sent to a large number of people. | |
Generate individual messages to Outlook contacts from documents designed in Word or Publisher, including messages in GIF format with image maps. Allows you to add attachments and generate a custom subject for each message using merged data. Does not trigger Outlook security prompts. | |
The Sperry Software Send Individually Add-In for Outlook sends email newsletters and other marketing to each of your recipients with just their name in the To field, similar to mail merge. It allows attachments to be on the email and it supports sending from different From accounts. Now reads Excel files directly, including CSV files. It also allows for using a BCC function so you can work with 3rd party CRM systems and, you can specify a different file in each row of your Excel spreadsheet and the add-in will find that file and attach it to just that recipient's email. | |
Mass mail tool that expands Outlook distribution lists and sends an individual message to each member of the list. Can exclude certain names from the DL. Has some mail merge capability for inserting personalized text in the body of messages. Outlook 2000 or later. |
Tools
Contact manager, integrated with Outlook for e-mail, calendar, task, and activity functions. Includes tracking of outgoing faxes, merge to HTML mail with attachments, ability to view ACT! contact databases in Outlook address book. Contact databases can be shared. | |
Manage your MailChimp lists from within Outlook. Subscribe Outlook Contacts to MailChimp lists. Synchronize Outlook Contacts with MailChimp lists * Easily see contacts who unsubscribe. Check if email addresses are on MailChimp lists. Subscribe and update email addresses as you read emails. | |
ContactMonkey brings advanced email tracking and Salesforce integration to Outlook. Use Mail Merge to track email campaigns by bringing all the tools you need to track your emails directly to your Inbox. | |
Create and send personalized individually addressed e-mail messages using an easy Wizard in Outlook - plain text, HTML or rich text. Your recipient list can be in Outlook, Exchange Global Address Lists, Excel or Access files. You can use Categories or Distribution Lists to keep mailing lists. You can even defer and batch send your emails to get around ISP restrictions. Outlook based solution for e-mail newsletters, business announcements and sales & marketing emails. Supports Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016 (32 and 64bit). | |
Mailing list manager for Outlook, using its own database. Can import/export via text file or grab addresses from messages in an Outlook folder. Handles subscriptions, removals and bounces. Does not trigger Outlook security prompts. Office XP or 2003. | |
Mail merge to email with support for attachments, pictures, and HTML hyperlinks. Messages are stored for later reuse. Does not trigger Outlook email security prompts. | |
Outlook Mail Merge Attachment supplies the mail merge process in Microsoft Office Word and Outlook with the functionality to add an attachment. The script is tested on Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007. (Free) | |
Email Merge Personalized Individually Addressed Invitations, Greetings and Sales Letters at the click of a button. Supports Outlook 2000,2002, 2003 and 2007, with or without Word as Editor. | |
Quickly send mass emails while retaining the individuality of each message. The specialized Outlook plugin button acts immediately to display only the individual receiver's name when they get their mail. | |
Bulk mail program that sends an individual message to each recipient. Can use Outlook data, as well as many other sources. Can attach up to 20 files, even to HTML-format messages, and use merge fields to build the message subject. Does not trigger the Outlook security prompts |
More Information
- Content Control Tools
- Compression Tools
- Decoder Tools
- Distribution List Tools
- Fax Tools -- includes tools for scanning documents into Outlook items
- Junk Mail Tools
- Notification Tools
- Security Tools -- Some of these also provide message tracking.
- Signature Tools -- including random quotes
- Microsoft Outlook Message Form Samples -- more sample message forms
- OL2000: How to Broadcast Mail Using Outlook
Hi Diane, Lately I have been having issues with email merge in Outlook. If I try to send to my customer list of 500 people, half of them end up undeliverable. I end up having to do batches of 5-20 at a time. What is up with that and is there a workaround?
Hi Diane,
We are trying to find a semi-automated approach to ask daily dashboard/report recipients in my company to OPT-IN for each of the reports they receive and process the replies. Each person receives from 1 to 20 reports each day and the distribution list by person by report is in a SQL Server table. We tried voting buttons but they do not work for everyone because we are on more than one Office 365 tenant. Any ideas on an approach we could take? We are proficient in Excel VBA and but beginner level in Outlook VBA.
Thanks - Jerry
Diane do you know a way to schedule mailmerge toolkit to send say 5 mails per minute instead of everything at once (because of ISP restrictions)?
No, i don't. It would need to be built into the program. You'll need to use one of the programs that supports it.
Hi Diane,
Trying to find a way to throttle emails generated using Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager's Marketing Campaigns function. Any suggestions?
You'd need to use a 3rd party utility or a macro that defers delivery by an increasing # of minutes.
https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/email/delay-sending-a-message/#tools
The macro at https://www.slipstick.com/developer/code-samples/delay-sending-messages-specific-times/ would be a base for it - you'd need to set the sendat time to something like
now + i/1440 where i is incremented (that is 1 min from now). If you can send 10 per min, use a counter to increase it every 8 or 9th message (to allow for "now" increasing).
Hi Diane, thanks so much for your posts.
Do you know of any way to help with this human error slip up - using cc for multiple recipients instead of bcc? Can I set up an automatic prompt popup for any email I try to send to more than, say, ten people? Thanks very much for your help. Chantelle.
Great post! Do you have a code or know of any macro that can delay messages being sent by mailmerge? (or know if any workaround to dodge the ISP limits for free?)
I've tried to work out a good formula that worked - it really varies by how many you can send per hour and how fast you need to send them. If you need to send fast, a service like Amazon SES will let you send fairly fast at a very low cost.
add this to the macro to set the do not deliver before property:
i = i + 1
.DeferredDeliveryTime = now + (i * .00025)
My recommendation is to use a simple code that debug.prints the calculated time - find the value that works best for you. Go to View > Immediate window to see the list of times. This is about 5 per minute. (the other example is about 3 per minute)
Sub checktimes()
For i = 1 To 100
Debug.Print Now + (i * 0.00015)
Next i
End Sub
Hi Diane. Can't tell you how grateful I am for your insights on Word plug ins. I'm wondering whether you have any insight into tools that can execute a personalized mail merge simultaneously with creating and merging a personalized attachment in .pdf format. Any thoughts? Have either Word or plug-ins come this far yet?
Merging a personalized document at the same time you are doing a mail merge would require VBA - most people prepare the files (saved with the recipients name) then do the email merge.
Looking for basically the same - editable email data within standard form (customer - amount owed ) and would need to include a .txt doc and recipients would have to be secure. (blind) - I can't believe that nobody has created a product for this scenario yet.
I'm not5 totally sure what exactly you need... but macros could probably do it. Maybe something like this...
https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/contacts/mail-merge-outlook-using-macro/
Hi Diane
I am desperately looking to send mass eMails with Voting Buttons (same options for all recipients) and a reminder-flag (same date for all recipients, that will remind them to follow up).
So far, I couldn't find any solution that provides such features.
Would you know which add-ons or tools would be able to help me?
Appreciate any help!
johann
I don't know if any of the addins can do those - but you can use a macro. This example sets the reminder - it's just a line or two to set the voting buttons. I'll update the macro.
https://www.slipstick.com/developer/code-samples/mark-mail-merge-messages-as-urgent/