Send to multiple recipients not in address book
FAQs about sending an email to multiple recipients seem to talk about using names already in one's address book to create a group. I have a text file that contains about 1000 addresses and want to send a one-time message to all of them (with each designed as BCC). How can I move those addresses all together -- or a big batch at a time in several messages -- without involving my address book?
All Replies (4)
Take a look at this add-on.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/mail-merge/
Thanks for your quick reply. It seems this add-on is limited to exporting from an address book (see my original post) or from a CSV file (which I'm afraid I'm not familiar with). I have a list of names in a text (.doc) file. Any ideas on how I can get that list moved to an email message?
Modified by BlebNevus1015
My suggestion is take off your blinkers. DOC is not a text file. It is a Microsoft word document file. The only chance you have of that being understood by a mail program is if you buy Microsoft Outlook.
Otherwise, become familiar with CSV files (Comma Separated Values) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values. CSV permeates the entire data interchange process, especially address books, but including database data and spreadsheets. CSV files are text files. Real ones! I talk about them a little here. http://thunderbirdtweaks.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/importing-csv-files.html
If you have Excel installed and double click a CSV file Excel will open the file. I use LibreOffice, but that does not change the fundamentals of the CSV data format.
So I suggest you save your file in Word as "Plain text" and open in in Excel and hope Excel can make heads or tails of it.
If you have Excel or any other spreadsheet or csv editor, create a sheet with these columns:
First Name,Last Name,Display Name,Nickname,Primary Email
Copy your 1000 addresses into the last column, and either fill in the other columns or leave them blank (but don't delete the column and its name).
Save the sheet as a csv file and import it to TB as explained in the previous post. This will create a new address book in TB, but in order to send a message to all 1000, you will have to create (probably 10, depending on your service provider's limits) mailing lists, which is easily done by drag and drop. Finally, send a message to each list with Bcc, but schedule it to stay within the limits.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Create_Mailing_List