Mail merge with attachment on Macbook using Word + Excel + Outlook 2016

Question

I use Mail merge on my Macbook using Word + Excel + Outlook 2016. However I can't understand how to send emails with attachment using the mail merge feature. 

I have seen clarification tutorials on how to send the attachments in outlook 2011 version using C:\location\filenmane.xls to be mentioned against each mail merge contact, but even thats not very easy to define in macbook, its not easy to define the file location in macbook as we can define in conventional windows platform.

I am aware that it can be done through mozilla thunderbird add-on, but I don't want to download and add more complexity, as my Mac runs on 128 GB space and always remain tight on space..

Answer 1

Doug,

I had a look at doing something like this a couple of years ago. There are a number of things on Windows that are either at least different or significantly harder on Mac so there are potentially a lot of new problems to solve. I haven't looked at your code but for example

 a. there is no reliable documentation for Mac Office VBA or Mac Office Applescript. Many things are the same, some things are missing or different, and some things look the same but are different or behave differently.

 b. it is not even possible to look at the Word object documentation via the Mac Word 2016 VBA editor, because that option does not exist. So although so far I have found that using the equivalent feature in Mac Word 2011 gives the right informaiton, only experiment can verify that new features have not been added and that behaviour remains the same.

 c. you can only really control Mac Outlook via Applescript or by using a Javascript Addin (as mentioned by Jim Gordon).

 d. Even doing a one-merge-at-a-time mailmerge has to be done differently because the object model on Mac Word is like an older version of the Windows one

 e. AFAIK the only reasonably simple way to access Excel data is via the object model (there is no ADO, DAO, OLE DB and using ODBC requires a commercial third-party add-on). IME controlling Excel reliably via Automation is not as easy on Mac.

I'm not saying it can't be done. What I'm saying is that there's a lot to discover, deal with, and make robust. And then there's the support...

But having a bunch of VBA code as a starting point would certainly make a huge difference, and I would certainly be willing to have a crack at a re-working if you are willing to share the code.

Answer 2

> Did someone find the answer?

The short answer is probably "no".

But it would probably be simpler if you can spell out exactly what you want to do.

e.g. you have a form letter, and you want a personalised version of that to go to a list of recipients, but you also want to attach 

 - the same file for every recipient?

 - a different file for each recipient?

 - or what?

Answer 3

Here are the two scenarios - let me know if anyone of this is possible using MS office 2016 Products (MS Word + MS Excel + MS Outlook ) on apple MacBook.

Scenario 1: We have a MS Word email format, and you want a personalised version of that to go as email to a list of recipients (using xls sheet carrying the name & email id of recipients), and in each of those emails, we also want to attach 

 - the same file as attachment for every recipient - lets say a standard company newsletter on a monthly frequency. 

Scenario 2: We have a MS Word email format, and you want a personalised version of that to go as email to a list of recipients (using xls sheet carrying the name & email id of recipients), and in each of those emails, we also want to attach 

 - a different file for each recipient... this might be linked in the xls sheet which we are using for name and email id and the next column could be for name of the file, which it has to pick..

so Vikrant V - ******@xyz.com and file name vikrant_reportcard

so Peter W - ******@xyz.com and file name Peter_reportcard

Possible?

Answer 4

Here are the two scenarios - let me know if anyone of this is possible using MS office 2016 Products (MS Word + MS Excel + MS Outlook ) on apple MacBook.

Scenario 1: We have a MS Word email format, and you want a personalised version of that to go as email to a list of recipients (using xls sheet carrying the name & email id of recipients), and in each of those emails, we also want to attach 

 - the same file as attachment for every recipient - lets say a standard company newsletter on a monthly frequency. 

Scenario 2: We have a MS Word email format, and you want a personalised version of that to go as email to a list of recipients (using xls sheet carrying the name & email id of recipients), and in each of those emails, we also want to attach 

 - a different file for each recipient... this might be linked in the xls sheet which we are using for name and email id and the next column could be for name of the file, which it has to pick..

so Vikrant V - ******@xyz.com and file name vikrant_reportcard

so Peter W - ******@xyz.com and file name Peter_reportcard

Possible?

Answer 5

Hi VikrantV,

Sorry, when I read your recent post I had forgotten that you had asked the original question here.

As has been said, as far as I know there is no current out-of-the-box or 3rd-party facility for doing this

For the first scenario it may still be possible to use the approach suggested in https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-mso_mac/mail-merge-manager-and-attachments/775cfc02-ffc7-48d9-98ab-189f0f3a424c , but the details very likely differ in the 2016 version.

In essence, what you do is

 a. clear out the Outlook Outbox/Drafts folder

 b. prevent Outlook from Sending

 c. do the merge (so you have a bunch of emails waiting to go)

 d. run an Applescript to attach the file(s) you want to every email

 e. let Outlook start sending again.

As it stands, to do that you need to know your way around both Applescript and Outlook.

That won't cope with the second scenario. Itis possible to imagine doing (a) to (c), then running a different piece of Applescript that will inspect the same Excel file and attach the right thing to the right emails.

I have got some way into converting the part of Doug Robbins' Windows utility that will cope with both scenarios, but there is some way to go. So far, I have not run into any showstoppers, but IMO it is not quite ready for even an "alpha" release. I will post further in this conversation when I've got a bit further along.