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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.
- Single message, multiple BCC
If you check this option, the message will have as to-recipient the same you use as "from" field in the preferences window, and the BCC recipients will be the ones you use in the "Recipients" field.
This option is useful if you are sending a BIG attachment and you have a 200-items recipients list (so, you send a single message instead of 200 times the same message with the BIG attachment).
If you check this option, though, you can't customize the subject and body of the message using smart tags (read below about this feature), since you are sending the SAME email to multiple recipients.
- Recipients
Create a tab-delimited, comma-delimited or return-delimited text file containig the recipients of your message.
Drop the related file (a single file) onto the "Recipients" text field.
Optionally, you can type the addresses manually, or 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. After adding the recipients to NewsLetter you can use the option "Filter Addresses..." (under the "Special" menu) and delete from the list certain addresses.
- 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 in any of the supported browsers (choose the "Special" menu).
You can create only a PLAIN TEXT body (in the "plain text" part).
You can create only a HTML body (in the "<HTML>" part).
Finally, you can include in your message BOTH kinds of body. When your recipients receive your message, their email client will display by default the HTML part. If the client does not support HTML or is configured to NOT display HTML, the user should see the stuff you wrote in the plain text part.
You can use also smart-tags. These will be applied to both the plain text and html parts of the message.
NewsLetter supports inline attachments, so if you are interested in this feature, or you are interested simply in sending HTML messages with NewsLetter, read about composing HTML messages in NewsLetter.
- 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", 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.
You can also use the menu "Create MBOX file..." ("Standard" menu) and create a mbox file. You can open this file later using any mbox-suitable email client, such as Apple's Mail, Entourage or Outlook Express, and preview your messages without sending them.
- Start
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