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Yet Another Mail Merge - YAMM

YAMM – Yet Another Mail Merge

Yet Another Mail Merge is a mail merge program that works within gmail and is available to all member of the Williams community.

One advantage is that it bypasses the existing 100 recipient limit that Google implements on IMAP connections, which is what Outlook uses.  The gmail limit is 2000 officially, although the mail merge app has a soft limit of 1500 individual recipients per merge.

Directions:

  1. In Chrome open up a new google sheet.  From Add-ons select get add-ons.  Search for YAMM.
  2. Download YAMM and accept the terms.
  3. Create your data source.  In the Google sheet put in whatever specific data you want, like a column of Firstname, Lastname, whatever.  The only column that has to be named exactly is the Email Address (where the email addresses go obviously).  If the data source is an Excel sheet you can copy and paste data into the Google Sheet or convert it to a sheet by bringing it into Google Drive.
  4. Go into gmail and create your template.  The template is simply a gmail draft email, so just start composing an email with an appropriate subject line.  For data fields use << >> to indicate the merge.  So for example:  Dear <<Firstname>>, how are you?
  5. Close that message (by hitting the x) and go to the Drafts folder.  It will be there, at the top of the list.  Star it.  This helps YAMM locate the template when you start the merge.
  6. Go back to your Google sheet and choose Add-ons, Yet Another Mail Merge, start Mail Merge.
  7. For Draft, choose the starred draft you created.  Sender Name can be the sender’s name.
    • You can send the mail merge as you, or if your are set up to send as different people that will be an option in the Send from: box.  For example if I have the ability to send as Ephraim Williams, type in Ephraim Williams as the Sender name and then choose Send from: [email protected]
    • Note that the send as account will need to be set up as “treat as alias”.  If you don’t see your send as address in the list go back to gmail settings, Accounts and edit the Send Mail As address so it is an alias.  You can switch it back to not being an alias after you send the mail merge.
  8. There is a send a test button  – this will email the sender a sample email which helps verify the fields are working as expected and the email format looks good.
  9. After verifying the message looks good, go ahead and start the merge.