4. Use Newsletter

Take a look here, this is the main window:



You can find some sample files for the next steps within the "examples" folder included with this distribution.


- Recipients

Create a tab-delimited, comma-delimited or return-delimited text file containig the recipients of your message. You must include only the email address. You can't use syntaxes as "Superman <super@man.com>" (you can't use "display names"). Use only email addresses. You will find a sample file within the "examples" folder.

Drop the related file (a single file) onto the "Recipients" text field.

Optionally, you can use the menu "Special" to grab the recipients from a FileMaker database, Apple's Address Book or use Entourage's own address book (using a single field of your interest).


- Subject

You can enter here two kinds of subject:
   • A simple subject, as "Newsletter - december 2004"
   • A customized subject for every recipient, as "I have some news for you, Johnny Deep!"

If you need a customized subject, keep reading this step.

Welcome, please, a new concept in this help file, called "smart tag". A "smart tag" is a chunk of special-formatted text where NewsLetter will include special-formatted text containing custom information. For example:

Hello, <<tag1>>

Becomes:

Hello, Dolly

And:

Hello, <<tag1>>, <<tag2>>

Becomes:

Hellos, Dolly, how do you do?

As you see, you use a numerical range of "tags": <<tag1>>, <<tag2>>, <<tag3>>... These tags will be replaced with the pertinent information you provided in a separate tab-delimited text file.

For example, you have 3 recipients: ray@charles.com, charlize@theron.com, theras@matter.com

And you wanna customize the subject for every recipient with his/her name: Ray, Charlie and Ther.

Just create a text file containing one-record per-line with the pertinent information:

------------------------
Ray
Charlie
Ther
------------------------

Now, create the subject: "Hello, <<tag1>>". NewsLetter will insert the relevant name for each recipient:

Hello, Ray
Hello, Charlie
Hello, Ther

If you need more than one "tag", just do it, inserting a tab character between tags:

------------------------
Ray [tab] folk
Charlie [tab] chick
Ther [tab] dog
------------------------

Will be:

Hello, Ray, you are a folk
Hello, Charlie, you are a chick
Hello, Ther, you are a dog

Abstract: type the subject with tags and drop onto the "SmartInsert" field a text file containing the information for each tag and every recipient.

You will see some sample smart-tags files within the "examples" folder.



- Body

Write here your body. You can also drop here a text file containing the body. You can also use as body the current html page opened at any of the supported browsers (choose the "Special" menu).

You can create HTML messages. They must start allways with "<html>" or "<HTML>" or they won't be recognized as html code.

You can use also smart-tags.

You can see a sample of body file browsing the "examples" folder.



- Add attachments...

Attachments will be base-64 encoded. This format only supports data-fork. So, if your file must retain resource fork (eg, a carbon application), compress it before using it as attachment (most of formats will be valid: sit, sitx, zip, gz, dmg...).

If you check "Single message, multiple BCC" in your preferences (see Setup Newsletter), you will create a single instance of this attachment. If, on the other hand, you uncheck this checkbox, NewsLetter will encode and send a single instance of all attachments for every recipient of your list. So, be careful. If you are attaching a big attachment for lots of recipients and you uncheck this option, the operation can be very tedious (eg, a 4 MB file for 100 recipients: 400 MB must be encoded and delivered through your internet connection).


- Preview icon

A preview of your message will be shown in a separate window. No need to jump to a web browser or text editor.


- Start

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