On the main window you will enter the location of your mailing list file into the To: edit box. AutoMSW can accept Comma Separated Value (.CSV) or Tab Delimited (.TXT) files for mailing lists. The only difference between these 2 file formats is that one uses a comma, and the other uses the tab character as the field delimiter. The first line in a mailing list contains the names of the fields. Here is an example mailing list using the CSV format:
Name,E-Mail
John Doe,jdoe@hotmail.com
Mary Smith,msmith@yahoo.com
Alex Bell,a_bell@abcdomain.com
This example mailing list has 2 fields: Name and E-Mail. Mailing lists are required to have a field name containing the text "E-Mail". This field will be used as the "To:" e-mail address when sending the message. This example has 3 records, so 3 e-mails would be sent when using this mailing list.
Blank lines and lines beginning with "//" will be ignored. Here is the same mailing list using comments:
// This mailing list is for notifying
// all customers of Product ABD
// about the new release of version 4.5.
Name,E-Mail
John Doe,jdoe@hotmail.com
Mary Smith,msmith@yahoo.com
Alex Bell,a_bell@abcdomain.com
If any field needs to contain the delimiter character (comma or tab), use double quotes around that field. For example:
Name,Price,E-Mail
John Doe,$450,jdoe@hotmail.com
Mary Smith,$530.75,msmith@yahoo.com
Alex Bell,"$1,300",a_bell@abcdomain.com
Notice the $1,300 has a comma in it, so it is surrounded by double quotes. The double quotes are not part of the field, and will be discarded for mail merge purposes. If you need a double quote in a field use 2 double quotes in a row. Fields can contain line breaks if desired. The maximum allowed length of any line is 512 characters.
Tip: If you have your mailing list in Excel or another spreadsheet, save it as a "CSV (Comma Delimited) (*.csv)" or "Text (Tab Delimited) (*.txt)" file to create your mailing list.
Tip: When an AutoMSW job finishes it will create 3 new mailing lists for you. One will contain the list of successfully e-mailed 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 e-mails 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.