Email groups: need tech help

[iris lilies]

I need a better way to manage my group emails then when I am now doing. Right now I keep email addresses in an MS Word file, each one separated by a comma.

That has been problematic for a long time because every character has to be in exactly the right place and there can be no spaces in the wrong place and etc. it is too damn persnickity.


Is there a good simple application that will work on 1) my IPADs 2) my HP unit 3) my MAC. You were going to ask me what email programs I use and this is annoying because I don’t know! I use what my email provider gives me! I can’t see that there is an option for a group management. Maybe I’m wrong.


I communicate with five groups, the smallest is five people the largest is 50 people, and I need their emails gathered together ins a clean, organized, and consistently workable way.


Help please.

[merince]

Maybe you should use an online service like feedburner or similar? Do one final manual mailing with the subscription link and use the service from there on. People can manage their own subscribe/unsubscribe. You can get the list of emails from the service if you ever need to.

[SteveinMN]

Tough to know what your options are without knowing what mail service you're using, but we'll try.

Just to get the quickie address out of the way, have you thought about keeping your list of addresses in Excel rather than Word, and doing a comma-separated export to your email apps (or using that CSV file for the cut-and-paste; let the machine do the formatting)?

I can't think of a single email client that runs on IOS, macOS, and Windows (did a quick Web search; nothing tickled my brain), so driving the address list from one application's address book doesn't look like it's going to happen. There are apps, however, which will sync their own address books to either the OS's Contacts/Address Book list or to some common format kept somewhere else in your computer kingdom. Is it a requirement that an update on one platform somehow updates them all? Or is that a nice-to-have-something-I-wouldn't-spend-money-for? Is there a huge issue with keeping those email addresses in Contacts or Windows' address book, tagged to belong to the respective groups?

[iris lilies]

Steve, I was hoping you would chime in.


OK – the first suggestion in your second paragraph is very useful because I do keep the largest groups in Excel anyway. I keep them there along with all contact information for each person. I Do not know how to do that export but the fact that it is possible to produce a perfectly formatted file is worth me looking into it. Let me think on that for a while.

[iris lilies]

Maybe you should use an online service like feedburner or similar? Do one final manual mailing with the subscription link and use the service from there on. People can manage their own subscribe/unsubscribe. You can get the list of emails from the service if you ever need to.

That is interesting, but I do not want to give these members an option of unsubscribing without me knowing. These are member groups they have agreed to be part of. If they want to drop out of the group they need to contact me directly and they know that. I also don’t want someone unsubscribing themselves mistakenly, and then complaining later, months later, that they never get any information.

[SteveinMN]

I Do not know how to do that export but the fact that it is possible to produce a perfectly formatted file is worth me looking into it. Let me think on that for a while.
I wouldn't bet next month's mortgage money that Excel will produce a perfect file ;), but it should provide a CSV that needs very little tweaking, if any. I think I can guide you through the export if you don't figure it out for yourself.

[catherine]

Maybe I'm being too simplistic, but doesn't your mail server allow you to create groups? i.e. Outlook: File>New>Group


For MAC Mail it says:


If you create groups in the Contacts app—say for a book club or cycling team—you can send messages to everybody in the group at once.

Type the name of a group in the address field of your message.

Either the group or individual contacts are shown. If the group is shown but you want to see individual contacts instead, click the arrow next to the group name, then choose Expand Group.

I checked out Contacts on my Mac and it's really, really easy to create a group.

[iris lilies]

Maybe I'm being too simplistic, but doesn't your mail server allow you to create groups? i.e. Outlook: File>New>Group


For MAC Mail it says:

If you create groups in the Contacts app—say for a book club or cycling team—you can send messages to everybody in the group at once.

Type the name of a group in the address field of your message.

Either the group or individual contacts are shown. If the group is shown but you want to see individual contacts instead, click the arrow next to the group name, then choose Expand Group.



I checked out Contacts on my Mac and it's really, really easy to create a group.

l havent touched the Mac for more than a year, but
I couldnt see a Groups function in the email program when I used it. It may be there.
I remember how annoyed I was because it seemed certain Apple would provide that.

When using “contacts” on my IPAD the heading “Groups” keeps appearing yet there are no prompts as to how to execute a group.

right now,
I need to send emails out to groups from both my IPAD and my Hewlett Packd machine, but maybe, for the moment, just using the Groups function on one of them woild be ok.

I will poke around with all of these suggestions..

WAIT: I distinctly remember emember looking up the possibility of formulating email “ groups” on the MAC and the source
i found said it was NOT possible.

[SteveinMN]

WAIT: I distinctly remember emember looking up the possibility of formulating email “ groups” on the MAC and the source
i found said it was NOT possible.
That must have been quite a while ago. I have a couple of email groups/mailing lists on my Mac and they've worked flawlessly -- some of them for years. They are driven off the Contacts app (used to be Address Book) but they work fine, even on an email app that's not Apple's (Thunderbird). If you do not anticipate using your Mac for this task, though, that makes it a bit easier to get this done.

[catherine]

l havent touched the Mac for more than a year, but
I couldnt see a Groups function in the email program when I used it. It may be there.
I remember how annoyed I was because it seemed certain Apple would provide that.

When using “contacts” on my IPAD the heading “Groups” keeps appearing yet there are no prompts as to how to execute a group.

right now,
I need to send emails out to groups from both my IPAD and my Hewlett Packd machine, but maybe, for the moment, just using the Groups function on one of them woild be ok.

I will poke around with all of these suggestions..

WAIT: I distinctly remember emember looking up the possibility of formulating email “ groups” on the MAC and the source
i found said it was NOT possible.

How old is your Mac? I have a Mac Air 2015 Sierra, and I can do what Steve said--form a group in Contacts and then use it in my emails.

[iris lilies]

How old is your Mac? I have a Mac Air 2015 Sierra, and I can do what Steve said--form a group in Contacts and then use it in my emails.
Sheepishly, I will admit that I bought this Mac in fall 2017. I think it is a MAC pro.
Havent used it. Our HP Piece of Sh*t was acting up as it has been for years (still is slow as hell) but I cannot face moving all of the files. Ugh.
So yeah, my MAC is recent.

probably Apple should just take it away from me, haha. I love my simple little intuitive IPADS even tho one of them last week surprised me by ringing, and there was a voice at the other end, and I carried on a conversation on this iPad tablet and I do not understand how that happened.

Ok, but looking into Contacts on the IPAD—yes I can form a group but that still requires comma delimited data with exactly correct punctuation. That isnt much better, maybe one step better, that what I now do. Instructions on the web say drop email addresss i to the Notes field to create a group and separate each address with a comma.

I liked Outlook at my workplace where I could tag a name in my contact list and make it part of a group.I assumed all email programs were like that, but nope.

Steve and catherine, thanks for your help. i am still working on this problem and may ask for help later. I may end up doing the Excel export as Steve suggests.

[razz]

IL, when I made my contact group lists on my Macbook Air, I set up the group name when I opened the contact list, highlighted the chosen names and holding down the button on the mouse moved each name over to the group contact list. It made a swoop sound and was added to the group.

I also make a point of email addressing the group name to BCC as a courtesy.

[SteveinMN]

I also make a point of email addressing the group name to BCC as a courtesy.
THIS.

I maintain a bunch of throwaway email addresses because people either don't know (or, more likely, don't care) that they are exposing many other people's email addresses to others, regardless of their computer hygiene or the lesser aspects of those other people.

[SteveinMN]

I love my simple little intuitive IPADS even tho one of them last week surprised me by ringing, and there was a voice at the other end, and I carried on a conversation on this iPad tablet and I do not understand how that happened.
DW does this. It has something to do with Handoff and allowing calls to her iPhone "ringing" all of her iOS devices. Surprises even me whenever it happens.

[merince]

That is interesting, but I do not want to give these members an option of unsubscribing without me knowing. These are member groups they have agreed to be part of. If they want to drop out of the group they need to contact me directly and they know that. I also don’t want someone unsubscribing themselves mistakenly, and then complaining later, months later, that they never get any information.

There is an option to be notified when someone unsubscribes. However, they are grown adults, hopefully... I mean someone needs to draw the line somewhere :). And on the serious note, I know exactly what you mean, though.

[iris lilies]

THIS.

I maintain a bunch of throwaway email addresses because people either don't know (or, more likely, don't care) that they are exposing many other people's email addresses to others, regardless of their computer hygiene or the lesser aspects of those other people.

I have been doing this recently after we all were chatized by garden club central about using TO.

[iris lilies]

Here is an update:


While I have not created email groups yet and I am feeling very stupid that it seems to be easy in IOS yet I don’t see the obvious way to do it, I did have a success along the lines of what Steve suggested.


For one of the groups I herd, I have an Excel spreadsheet with all of their contact information. Their email addresses are in one column. So I just copied and pasted that column, and dropped data into the “To” prompt of my email program. That works beautifully.

Since this is so sweet, I probably will not have to maintain a separate MS Word document of their email addresses. That is a major step forward.

[SteveinMN]

Here is an update
Sometimes simple is good enough. Glad that's working for you, IL!