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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 (that is, yourself), 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 plain text file containig the recipients of your message. Make sure you stripped blank spaces.
Drop the related file (a single file) onto the "Recipients" text field.
Optionally, you can type the addresses manually, use the "Special" menu or the shown buttons 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. NewsLetter will insert tags positionally. That is, it will insert "Ray" and "folk" for the first recipient you typed in the "Recipients" field, and so on.
You will see some sample smart-tags files within the "examples" folder.
Smart-tags can be also picked automatically from a opened database in FileMaker. If you click the button with the FileMaker icon next to the text field, you will be prompted to choose which fields you wish use for smart-tags. For example, if you own a database with your customers' names and phones, you could choose both fields and create a subject as: "Hi, John! Is your phone number 555-555-555 still working?"
- 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).
To add attachments, drop them in the "Attachments" button, or click it and you will see a little attachments editor:

As you see in the little message, you can drop files onto the list field in order to add new attachments, and select-then-use-delete-key to remove them from the list.
- 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.
- H icon
If you click this button, you will see a little window where you can add some pre-defined extra headers for your message, or add your own ones:

- Icons between the Preview and Start buttons
If you are Entourage user, you will recognize these. Otherwise, they will be greyed out.
If you choose the first
one, you will create and place the messages at Entourage's Outbox folder.
UNDER SOME CIRCUMSTANCES, if you create html messages and click them in Entourage (or edit them), their contents will be destroyed and you will loss the html formatting. If this is your problem, you can still use the next button.
The next button will use Entourage to send the messages generated by NewsLetter. This is useful if:
a) You can't send messages using NewsLetter (because it doesn't work or you hate it or whatever)
b) You wish keep track of sent messages in your regular email client
If you use this function, messages will be sent immediatelly. Of course, NewsLetter must be configured as at least one same account in Entourage (did I explain it? If you configure NewsLetter with your foo@foo.com account, Entourage must own also the configuration for such foo@foo.com account, or it won't recognize the sender of the message).
- Start
Start sending messages using NewsLetter. Successes and errors will be logged for further review. If there is some problem, you will be warned. |