Mail merge with Email accounts

We had done a blog about how to read emails from multiple account all once. Click here to have a quick look. We also introduced everyone to an email client called Thunderbird.

Investigating further, we discovered that a lot more can be done with this amazing add-on in Thunderbird. Assuming there's a need to send personalised email to a lot people and we want to avoid the trouble of fixing the recipients' names one after another, we mail merge the email by using a standard message and fixing the names and titles of each recipients before sending. Mail merge was made popular with the popular word processing software Microsoft Word. The feature is used to send the same email to lot of people but making contents of the email specific to each recipient.

Email attachment for each recipients can also be sent with emails. The process works using a database or a list some sort  and fixing the name, title or information specific for each recipient.  The source( list or database) has to be in a CSV( Comma Separated Value) format. The software scans the source attaching specific record for each recipient and attaches it to fields in a squiggly bracket in an email template.

This feature does not come "out of the box" for Thunderbird email client, rather it comes as an extension or add-on to the software. To get this extension, one has to go to the Tool feature in the menu and select "Add-ons", just as shown in the picture below.

Selecting "Add-ons" will take one to the page that looks as shown below:

Click on "Get Add-ons" option just as in the photo and then do a search for "mail merge" and then install the add-on, it's ready to use once installation is completed.

To use the add-on, select "New" and "Message" from the "File" menu, just as shown in the image below, which is the usual step to take when sending an email.

A new window opens up, where email address, subject and the message are typed in. To activate mail merge, it has to be selected from the "File" menu of this new window,as shown in the diagram below.

Another window opens up, this window will point the template to the source where records will be looked up and attached to the template. This windows also has features that will enable users to make attachments,decide when the mail will be sent, parse source data ( in cases where delimiters other comma has been used). An image of the window is shown below.

This add-on is so good that it can populate email addresses from the source, typing mail addresses in simple as enclosing the "Email" field in squiggly brackets and it's typed in.

Enjoy the add-on.