Hello Jan, > Just curious - on what basis would you think this w/o > having tried it?
I didn't say I haven't tried it, I said I haven't _used_ it. A slight difference, but perhaps significant. Just the same that, to me, there is a difference between "mass mailing" and "mail merge". I have read all I could find about mass mailing with TB! and set up one, although I didn't send it. > It may well be true. I certainly wouldn't know because > I've never used Virtual Access but I'd be interested in > hearing how you arrived @ this conclusion given your > current TB! experience(s). OK, let me give you an example. I have a DB/Contact Manager with all my clients (hundreds, fortunately :) and every months I want to send a letter (e-mail) to those whose maintenance contract will expire within one month. Aside of their name and address (e-mail address if done by e-mail) I need to refer to their UserID, numbers of licenses, date that the contract expires, the name of the distributor that they have to contact (or will contact them) and perhaps some other field from the DB. You can obviously do this with TB! but it is not straight forward. To start, each months I would have to export the corresponding list of clients and create an address book in TB with their name and address. But, what about the rest of the variable fields I need to include in the messages? How did I do it with VA?. I would select those clients whose contract would expire within one month and export the desired fields to a CSV file. Any DB I know of can do that. Now, in VA, I do need to set a template (much like a QT in TB) in which I can refer to the CSV values by column numbers: %1%, %2%... %n%. So that if I had exported to CSV file the fields: Name, Email, Salutation, No. of licenses, Exp. Date, etc., in this order, I could write my template something like: ------------------ To: %1% <%2%> Subject: Maintenance expiration %3%, Our records show that the Maintenance contract for your %4% licenses of Product are due to expire on %5%....blah, blah, blah. ------------------ And now, even without saving the template if I have just composed it, or by opening in the editor if previously composed, all I have to do is to click on the "E-mail merge" button which will request the name of the CSV file and... voila!, there go the umpteen fully customised messages. -- Best regards, Miguel A. Urech (El Escorial - Spain) Using The Bat! v1.60c ________________________________________________________ Current Ver: 1.60c FAQ : http://faq.thebat.dutaint.com Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives : http://tbudl.thebat.dutaint.com Moderators : mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] TBTech List: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
