On Fri, 2020-10-09 at 18:26 +0100, Pete Biggs wrote:
> Mail merge as a process was always a function of office, not mail, > applications. It's not something that non-business people ever do so > I'm not surprised that people are not that familiar with the concept. I'm not a business person, and I use it often. I've also taught many other non-business people how to use it on TB. It's really not hard, and while I suggest they use "send later" and check the messages in their outbox, I've been using it once or twice a month at least since at least 2014 and have not seen an error yet, not in my emails nor the hundreds I've had from others who also use it. > At least with > an office application you can check before mailing out a few hundred > sheets of paper that it's correct - with email, you don't even get > that > chance. Even Evolution has a "send later" function (I think - it's not as clear as in TB), where the emails are stored in an outbox and sent at a later time. At least with TB's Merge plugin it prefers to send in that manner. You can send as many emails as you want, until you click on "send unsent emails" (or switch to 'online' from offline mode) nothing will go out. It's also quite easy to accidentally put every one in "cc" or "to" fields instead of BCC, and accidentally give every one each others email addresses - for me that would be a major failing, and under my country's privacy laws could actually get me fined, even as a private person. > > Personally, if I want to send individual messages to multiple people > I use a shell script. Lots of us have moved on from scripts, and there are whole generations coming behind us who aren't interested in or experienced with such things. Me? on TB I visit my address book (card book plugin which makes TB's useless default one a bit closer to Evos much better default address books :) ), ^click each person I want the message to go to, click "write" and fill in the details, then click on the "Mail Merge" button in TB's menu bar. If I am feeling really brave (which is normal after years without issue) I click on "send now". If the email contains some really private stuff and I want to be sure of who it is going to, I use "send later". I've taught elderly relatives to use Merge with ease. I've got them happily using Linux for daily stuff. But I'd not even begin to consider getting them to access a terminal let alone use shell scripts! > If I did it very often I would look at dedicated > bulk mail programs. > Lots of us would do it otherwise, hence the desire to see the same functionality in Evolution. I don't do "mass" as such, I think the largest number I've sent to is 20 or so family and friends members, usually only around 5-10 depending on the topic _______________________________________________ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list