HPR4525: Using mail merge in thunderbird

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As the new year show is upon us, Ken needs a way to send out some mail messages to fellow Free Culture Podcasters .

Rather than just putting every one on the bcc, a more personal mail list can be done using the Thunderbird Mail Merge add on.

Install

Download it, and then open Thunderbird, select "Tools", "Add-ons and Themes".

Then press the Cog icon ⚙, and select "Install Add-on From File...",

Finally select the downloaded file and confirm.

Creating the CSV

To use it create a list of emails with a heading, "PrimaryEmail" in our example.

$ cat maillist2025.csv
PrimaryEmail
jblogg@example.com
missing@example.nl
janvanduck@example.nl

Using Mail Merge

Just add each column field to the address boxes, or the body of your message, surrounded by double curly brackets .

In our case we add "{{PrimaryEmail}}", in the to field.

Then press the new "Mail Merge" button in the top right.

Select "CSV" and select the file you prepared before.

If you are sending now, then you can put in a random delay, so that when you press send there will be a delay between each of the mails been sent.

If you select the default send later, then after pressing send the mails will be placed in the outbox so you can send them later.

Links

• https://freeculturepodcasts.org/
• https://services.addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/mail-merge/
• Cog icon provided by https://glyph-party.wimpys.world/ from https://linuxmatters.sh/67/

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