We'll follow these steps to send our first bulk emails with Auto Mailer:

1. Select your sending method
2. Create and assign your mailing list
3. Enter the subject for your message
4. Compose and assign your message
5. Start the job

Step 1: Select your sending method
Press the Change... button in the From section of the main window, to bring up the Email Configuration dialog box:

Choose one of the 3 sending methods, directly to recipient, a specific SMTP server, or your MAPI email client.  Fill in any available options once you've chosen your method.  For our example, we'll choose the direct send method.  In this case, the only option required is your email address.  Press OK to return to the main window.

Step 2: Create and assign your mailing list
Auto Mailer can accept Comma Separated Value (.CSV) or Tab Delimited (.TXT) files for mailing lists.  You can create your mailing list in a text editor, or by saving from a spreadsheet program, such as Excel.  Use the Browse... button to select your mailing list.  Use the button to view your specified mailing list.  For more details on mailing lists see the Using Auto Mailer / About Mailing Lists section in the documentation.  For now, you can just use the sample mailing list.  To see what the sample mailing list looks like, click the button.

Step 3: Enter the subject for your message
Simply fill in the Subject edit box with the subject you want for your emails.

Step 4: Compose and assign your message
You can use your favorite text and HTML editors to create and save the message files.  Then, enter the location of these message file(s).  If you only want to send a plain text message un-check the HTML option.  Auto Mailer can send either just a plain text message, or a multipart message.  A multipart message contains both a plain text and HTML view of the message.  The recipient's e-mail reader decides which view will be shown to the reader.  Most modern e-mail readers are capable of showing the HTML view.  A plain text version of your message is always required, but the HTML version is optional.

When sending using the MAPI sending method there will not be an option for an HTML view.  Instead, there will be an option to include an attachment.  Any type of file can be attached.

Use the Browse... buttons next to each field to go find the desired file.  Use the magnifying glass buttons () to open the file in it's associated application.

For now, you can just use the default sample messages that came with Auto Mailer.  If you use the buttons to view the messages you will notice they are utilizing the mail merge feature of Auto Mailer.  For more on mail merge see the Using Auto Mailer / Mail Merge section in the documentation.

Step 5: Start the job
Press the Start button () to begin sending the bulk emails.  A progress bar and status text will be displayed as the emails are being sent.

When the mailing job is complete, you will be notified how many emails were sent, and how many failed.  You can see the log file for the job under the View menu.  When an Auto Mailer job finishes it will create 3 new mailing lists for you.  One will contain the list of successfully emailed recipients.  The second will contain the list of failed recipients.  These first 2 mailing lists will be formatted the same as your original mailing list.  The third mailing list will contain all the failed recipients, along with a new field containing the reasons why the emails failed.  This can be useful in helping clean up your mailing lists.  To view these new mailing lists see the View menu from the main window.

Next Steps:
Next, you can create your own mailing lists and messages.  You may also want to optimize certain program options.  See the menu command File / Options....  This dialog provides the following choices:

To use the "Verify" only mode, press the Advanced Options... button and enable that option:

To schedule a bulk email job to run at some point in the future, select File / Schedule A Job... from the main menu.  For more details on sending bulk emails with Auto Mailer see the online documentation and the FAQ.