Rated 5 out of 5 stars

by Hottie-Doll on Feb. 20, 2015 · permalink

- INTRO -
Many people here are having trouble/difficulty with their initial configuration. As warbieguy put it "Once I nutted out what to do, it was very easy. But the instructions are too terse." So rather than doing a quick start for newbies (I may still do one later) like I did for Stationery add-on, which by the way works very nicely with this add-on. I felt it would be more helpful to review what problems people reporting (going by the reviews posted here) and cover them all in one review so people will not need to dig through 120+ reviews to find something. The developer has been reported to be very helpful, so if this does not help you can give him an email. OK I think I am done with the "plugs". :)

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- TEST BEFORE EMAIL -
The newest review (as of this writing) was by JBourne123 "Normal address book works great . . . BUT crashing Thunderbird for CSV files" I have not seen this and I use the .csv files all the time. If your having problems like this or any other problem you can not "nutout" email Alexander Bergmann the link is on the right side look under "Support E-mail". However before you do that I would suggest that you download a clean new Thunderbird (you can use the portable Thunderbird so as not to add/change a your profile) and try it out with no add-ons or themes.

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- PICTURES -
Some people have had problems embedding pictures and images in mail body/signature. Keep in mind that you much be using HTML in your emails to embed pictures/images. Another add-on called "Always HTML" may help https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/always-html/ One person stated "tried author's suggested workaround for embedding images, but it doesn't work 100%. sometimes my signature image shows up but left out another image, vice versa, or both would get left out. though if i keep my mailing group real small (<5) it seems to work fine". This may be, in part, do to the size of your images. Hard to say.

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- ADDRESS BOOK VS. .CSV -
Quokka Systems said "I used the link to a CSV file which allowed huge flexibility." What I think he is talking about is the fact that you can use Thunderbirds address book OR a .csv file to make your bulk mail. When you use the address book you have to use very exact terms for the values/properties/variables your using to make your mass mailing(s). Look above at the add-on description for more information on the term/properties you can use with the address book, he has a link with even more. ALSO note when using the Address book (unlike using a .csv file) the "Recipients To:" section works differently. When using the address book you just add all the people into the "Recipients To:" plane and then the Mail Merge add-on will "split them up" into separate emails. NOW when using a .CSV file Variables are supported differently. In the example just stated with the "Recipients To:" you can have Variables when using .vsc files. So even though I have not tried it, this means (I think) that one could have many people set-up in the "Recipients To:" section. It would be a pain in the butt to set up (you would need to have the .csv file set up just right) and I see no reason to do that since both the CC and BCC work with Variables and the fact you can send everyone their own personal email but the point is you could do it if you wanted to. You see when using a .csv file to do your mailing list you can use as many fields from a .csv file as you want, aka make up your own fields. To be clear, you could make a field that says TheirDogsName in the header of the .csv file and then when you put {{TheirDogsName}} in your email, this add-on will find the header that says TheirDogsName, then find the person that it matches (via the email address) and put their dogs name in the spot you said to. As long as you follow the rules this can do a lot, and do not even get me started with you can do with the if/then options. LOL

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- HOW BIG CAN .CSV BE -
Many people have asked what is "the limit of addresses per csv file, if any" and from what I have read it seems to be different for different people. One person reported "I tried a .csv list with 407 names and I had to break it into 4 separate files to get it to work. Other than that, it works great; the documentation could be a bit better, that's all." yet keep in mind "If using this add-on, it may be best to mail only 50 or so people at a time and have an hour's break between batches so that your ISP does not ban you for spamming." Yet some people say they have to keep it very small for it to work, where others report sending out "1000 email within a CSV file and it works great." I believe the amount you can send at one time changes, depending on what kind situations you have.

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- ENIGMAIL -
Enigmail creates trouble, from day one. It is not supported at this time. I have other add-ons that do not use Enigmail plus some of the POP severs I use do not support it so I do not use it. Others have reported: If Enigmail is installed, it will encrypt every outgoing email with YOUR key only. This makes the message unreadable for the intended recipients. Disable Enigmail with a restart of Thunderbird, run your mail merge, then your can re-enable Enigmail.

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- OUTBOX PROBLEM -
On person said "Mass Mail should send the separated e-mails for each recipient automatically from the outbox. Currently the user needs to send the mails manually." I use the "Mail Merge" add-on with another add-on called "Send Later" add-on so I have not seen this action and do not know if it still applies, just a heads up that you may run into it.

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- MUST BE GODLIKE WITH ENTERIES -
People have requested that "unsent mails due to erratic email address will be skipped and continue sending out the next unsent message, rather than pausing the whole queue of outgoing unsent messages", yes it is a pain in the butt. Yet if it was to do "skip" bad entries you would then need also change the add-on so you could be notified of what ones was skipped and why they where skipped. Otherwise you would have no idea who got what emails your list(s). I do not know a lot about programming but I do know enough about it to know that it would take a lot of work to add that. YES it would be VERY nice to have that function. Where it is good to make suggestions, as part of giving feedback, please to not "write a bad review" that the program is bad or broken because of this. On that note, Dave S said "I gave this a try and had trouble. If there is a bad email in the list it stops in the middle of your list and it is difficult to determine where. So unless you are sure your list is clean this is not the best product to use." Yes I ran into that situation as well. The "trick" I used to find the "bad egg" in the bunch was to make a copy of the .csv file and delete 1/2 of the items and see if it worked, thereby cutting the amount of entries I had to search in 1/2. Then again if needed. If your using the address book to make your mailing, the "trick" will not work as well. One more reason to use .csv files over using the address book if you have big lists.

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- CHARACTERS & SPACES -
CSV files are case/blank space sensitivity, this is very important when using Mail Merge with a .csv file. Kinda 2 or 4 points to make at one time here, they kinda go together. It has been said in reviews time and again that .csv file no not allow for certain characters like apostrophes, slashes, space characters and such. ALSO Keith Tyler said "This made so simple what I was trying to do with a complex awk-and-shell script! Just organize the data into a CSV, insert headers, and create your email. The only thing I wish I could figure out is how to embed line breaks in CSV or have TB or MM convert something else to line breaks. But I just split the values into separate fields and added them one by one and it did the job."

Now I am not sure what exactly what values Keith had to split, have not talked to Keith so I do not know what he was trying to do here but it does bring to mind some things I would like to share. Symbols outside of the character set that your using will mess things up. Now .CVS files can support text (items) in quotes. Remember that with .CVS files you can have a blank field if you just have a space surrounded by quotes like this " " ALSO you MAY be able to use special characters in the quote marks. Let me back up a bit here first thing you need to make sure is that your using the same Character Set with this add-on (it gives you the chance to check what one your using in the option window that opens after you start the merge) as the one your .cvs file is using. Here is the Character Set to use: Windows-1252 (Windows), UTF-8 (Linux) and UTF-8 (Mac) however I have use UTF-8 on my PC and seems to work fine with CSV files. So you MAY be able to use a "non-supported" Character Set for your set up to get the characters your looking for. Careful this will void the warranty you got from your "Mail Merge" add-on. :)

JeanneR said in part "This is really lovely . . . you might think that a space follows a comma. Not so. Kill any spaces around commas and all will sail smoothly . . . Well worth making a contribution so that Alexander is adequately rewarded and keeps up the good work."
Yes this is a .CSV thing nothing to do with this program. I know a little bit about .CVS files and I still made a boo boo with the way the entries are separated. My problem was that the .CVS file was set to use BOTH tabs and commas and I did not notice that the .cvs file was USING THE TABs to separate the values. I had the add-on set to use "just" commas. I knew this and it still slipped by me; took a 1/2 a day to "fix" it. Yea, I know, I am not the quickest duck in the water sometimes.

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- CLEAN MY TBIRD -
I found many people talking about removing dead/old emails and/or for sorting emails and people even talking about bounced emails. Seems beyond the scope of this add-on to me. People have made all encompassing add-ons to Thunderbird before, "mail tweaks" come to mind here. The problem with them is 2 fold. Most people do not want/need all the functions and it is to complex or bloated for them and 2nd is that since Thundebird is always upgrading big multi use add-ons become to much to keep up on. I did make an add-on collection called FOLDER & FILTERS plan to make one for "flushing/trash/delete" but have not had the time to review them all well enough to suggest any of them but ThunderPlunger comes to mind and there are some add-ons to auto compact and repair folders but like I said, I have not reviewed them all yet so I can not suggest the best ones. PEASE do not get me wrong here, I do not mean to suggest that people should not make suggestions. What I am saying is there may be other add-ons that do what you want and maybe even better than you hoped for.

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SOME QUICK NOTES:

At times good to remember the 'Edit message as new' action to start new (or another) Mail Merge section.

Don't leave any spaces between field separators in your csv file .

Does work with embedded images if you embed them with an internet link.

Sometimes you need to re-try mail merge like when editing a CVS folder when an "write" window/tab is open.

I use Lebra Office but some people may find this helpful: "The .csv file failed when created from an Excel (2003) spreadsheet (file/save as). I opened the .xls file in Open Office and saved it as a .csv file and it worked fine."

I use Linux and Windows but MAC people may find this helpful: "If you use Apple address book, looks like you will have to convert to a .CSV file before you use this addon. Thing is after you convert your Apple address book into a .CSV file you can then upload it into Thunderbird's address book."

Dan Kelly said "AMAZING PLUGIN! AMAZING SUPPORT! It's free, but certainly worth donating if you use it. I've seen $100 mail merge software programs that don't work this well." I agree.

THANKS Alexander for all your work on this add-on.