Bulk Email Problems (OL2000SR1 IMO)

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I want to send an email to 200 recipients – either using the famous recipients list suppressed trick, or just entering them in the TO field.
But some of the recipient addresses are invalid, so the message stays in my outbox until I remove the problem addresses – which can take hours when outlook doesn’t always tell me WHICH address is faulty! 🙁
Surely there’s some way to send to a bulk list so it sends them all & I just get back a list of failures?
Is this a server issue? Sometimes my group mails go to the server & the errors come back next day. Other times, it won’t leave my outbox if any address is invalid??
Confused!!

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use mail merge and send 200 messages, 1 per person.

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OK – I’ll take your advice, but why oh why does OL manage to make this so hard, when eudora light just sends ’em and doesn’t stop to ask if they’re all valid??
Can’t someone explain what’s going on – so I don’t think OL is even stupider than I used to think!

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Are these address in a valid FORMAT and/or are they just junk entries untill one gets a real address?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Truth is, I’m quoting a colleague’s experience sending club correspondence. As I understand it, the addresses were all valid formats, provided by another club member who uses the same list in eudora light and we imported his semi-colon separated list into an outlook folder as new contacts.
The problem was that some were no longer current addresses and he was sending via his mail.bigpond.com server.
That’d be fine if the messages left his outbox and came back with errors. BUT it sat there not going to anyone, so he actually sat there manually sending about 300 emails!!!! (Even 2-10 addresses per send was failiing.)
He tried using a group addressbook entry and just entering the mass of names in the addressee box.
Better him than me. 🙂

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i don’t think it was because the addresses were old and no longer in use – unless the receiving mail server was no longer in DNS. for example, if you used to be dave@aol.com and closed that account and are now dave@msn.com, and someone sends to you at aol, the mail will be recieved at aol and bounce. Outlook does not verify it before sending. if the address is in error – dave@aol (no com) outlook won’t send, because it’s an invalid address. i seem to have a lot that are ‘dave@aol.com’ and outlook thinks the ‘ is part of the address. there is no aol.com’, outlook knows com’ is not valid and it fails.

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mmmm?
Andy swears that each address worked when sent as a singular letter!??
I might check his address list
Thanks for the tips

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it could be no separator or commas are used and outlook isn’t set to use commas

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outlook verifies the address is either a valid format (user@domain.com) or gets the address book if you use first last name. whether it is the right way or just sending and hoping they don’t bounce is the right way – hard to say – but i personally prefer it warning me – beats resending all the time.

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Any chance that someone can explain the “famous recipients list suppressed trick”? I using Outlook 98 and send client/customer updates via e-mail and would like to “hide” the distribution list from the recipients as several of recipients (customers) are competitors of one another. THANKS.

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(Probably:)
Create an address book entry called “Undisclosed recipients” and make the address your own.
Put it in the To: field.
Put the distribution list in the Bcc: field.

(I actually detest the term ‘undisclosed recipients’ so much I block it – make it something nicer like ‘Our favourite customers’…)

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Yep – that’s what I meant. Leif beat me to it.

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Leif,

I know this was a while ago but I have a question on this list suppression thing. I’m using Outlook 2000 SP3 IMO but I cannot see how to achieve what you are suggesting. When I create a Group Name in my address book it permits me to name the group and to add contacts to the group but I don’t see how to differentiate between To: and Bcc: as you suggested in this post. Maybe I’m being thick here but I would appreciate it if you could elaborate.

Many thanks,

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OK, it is easy to forget that sometimes you miss out on the obvious steps, so no problem!
I don’t have 2003 and don’t use Word for emailing, but the bones of it are this:

Create your distribution list, which we will call “My friends list”
Create a single email address in your contacts/address book – which we will call “My friends” – which has your own email address in it.

When you create the email, you put “My friends” in the To: field, and “My friends list” in the Bcc: field. When the mail arrives at the recipients, all they see is that it is addressed to “My friends” – all addresses in the group list are hidden as the Bcc entry is not shown.
Printing the email will not show the recipient list either, and anybody clicking on reply will open up a new email to you.

(You will of course receive a copy of the email yourself, but you do need to have something in the To: field. If your Bcc: field is not showing by default, you can get it displayed through View > Bcc Field.)

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OK, it is easy to forget that sometimes you miss out on the obvious steps, so no problem!
I don’t have 2003 and don’t use Word for emailing, but the bones of it are this:

Create your distribution list, which we will call “My friends list”
Create a single email address in your contacts/address book – which we will call “My friends” – which has your own email address in it.

When you create the email, you put “My friends” in the To: field, and “My friends list” in the Bcc: field. When the mail arrives at the recipients, all they see is that it is addressed to “My friends” – all addresses in the group list are hidden as the Bcc entry is not shown.
Printing the email will not show the recipient list either, and anybody clicking on reply will open up a new email to you.

(You will of course receive a copy of the email yourself, but you do need to have something in the To: field. If your Bcc: field is not showing by default, you can get it displayed through View > Bcc Field.)

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Leif,

I know this was a while ago but I have a question on this list suppression thing. I’m using Outlook 2000 SP3 IMO but I cannot see how to achieve what you are suggesting. When I create a Group Name in my address book it permits me to name the group and to add contacts to the group but I don’t see how to differentiate between To: and Bcc: as you suggested in this post. Maybe I’m being thick here but I would appreciate it if you could elaborate.

Many thanks,

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