Emailing to a group

March 28, 2006 12:40 PM

How can I send mail to a group of about 15 people? I've found that cc: is not reliable.

The reason I say that is in the past I've had one delivery problem (like a bounce or an invalid adddress) cause delivery delays for an entire cc: list. I don't understand how that happens, but it's an issue as I can't have delays on any outgoing messages.

I've tried Infacta Group Mail, which can send them out one at a time. But recent releases seem to be bloatware... heavy on DLLs/OCXs. I don't have the fastest computers in the world and my CPU bogs down just to write a simple note. I'm looking for something lightweight.

What about E-mail programs for the Microsoft Windows command line? I think it would be awesome to type up a note in Notepad and then have a batch file do the rest.

Any ideas here?

posted by zek to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

http://www.ntsendmail.com/
posted by devilsbrigade at 12:50 PM on March 28, 2006

The reason I say that is in the past I've had one delivery problem (like a bounce or an invalid adddress) cause delivery delays for an entire cc: list.

Are you sure this is the case, because that doesn't make much sense. Here is a brief post in Usenet explaining how BCC and CC are not part of the protocol used to send emails. Basically, your email program does send a single copy of the message out to each recipient. They should be independent of one another.
posted by chunking express at 12:54 PM on March 28, 2006

You could script it easily (I've done something very similar with automated SMTP mailing in vbscript using a template), actually, and there are command line smtp programs as well. Below is a vbscript for sending mail. You could amend it slightly to basically be a command line vbscript you point at two text files: a list of recipients, and a templated file that would

 If wscript.arguments.count > 0 then
    targetEmail = wscript.arguments.item(0)
  else
    wscript.echo "No email address specified"
    wscript.quit
 End if
 SendMail targetEmail
wscript.quit
 Sub SendMail (targetEmail)
        ' Put the message template here; assumes no in-template replacement for personalization to the recipient
        ' you can do either a full HTML-formatted message, or a simple plain-text message
	strHTML = messagetemplate

	Const cdoSendUsingMethod        = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing"
	Const cdoSendUsingPort          = 2
	Const cdoSMTPServer             = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver"
	Const cdoSMTPServerPort         = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport"
	Const cdoSMTPConnectionTimeout  = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpconnectiontimeout"
	Const cdoSMTPAuthenticate       = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate"
	Const cdoBasic                  = 1
	Const cdoSendUserName           = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername"
	Const cdoSendPassword           = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword"
	Dim objConfig  ' As CDO.Configuration
	Dim objMessage ' As CDO.Message
	Dim Fields     ' As ADODB.Fields
	' Get a handle on the config object and it's fields
	Set objConfig = CreateObject("CDO.Configuration")
	Set Fields = objConfig.Fields
	' Set config fields we care about
	With Fields
		.Item(cdoSendUsingMethod)       = cdoSendUsingPort
		.Item(cdoSMTPServer)            = "mail.myisp.com"
		.Item(cdoSMTPServerPort)        = 25
		.Item(cdoSMTPConnectionTimeout) = 10
		.Item(cdoSMTPAuthenticate)      = cdoBasic
		.Item(cdoSendUserName)          = "EMAIL ADDRESS/LOGIN"
		.Item(cdoSendPassword)          = "SMTP PASSWORD"
		.Update
	End With
	Set objMessage = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
	Set objMessage.Configuration = objConfig
	With objMessage
		.To       =  "targetEmail"
'		.CC	  =    ' may be unnecessary
		.From     = "[e-mail]"
		.Subject  = "Stuff"
		.HTMLBody = strHTML
		.Send
	End With
	Set Fields = Nothing
	Set objMessage = Nothing
	Set objConfig = Nothing
  End Sub

posted by hincandenza at 1:03 PM on March 28, 2006

any simple way in outlook to put all the addys in the "to" field but not have each one be able to see the others?
posted by Izzmeister at 1:15 PM on March 28, 2006

Braindead autoresponders will respond to all people in the To: or CC: line of an e-mail. To solve your problem, use your mailer's "BCC:" to address your mails. First of all, it'll prevent the mass spamming of those out of office notices (etc), and second, nobody's e-mail address is being shared with the others that are receiving your missive.
posted by Merdryn at 1:26 PM on March 28, 2006

On my old Windows machine(a very slow first generation Pentium) I use Pegasus Mail. We also use Pegasus at work on some older hardware. One of the nice features it has is Distribution Lists, which are ideal for communicating with groups of people, and when configured properly will prevent the problem noted by Merdryn.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 4:42 PM on March 28, 2006

you want mutt http://mutt.org windows version from http://www.geocities.com/win32mutt/download/mutt-1.4.zip (warning may require compiler and or cygwin)

The best email client, command line and console.

I just sent out a batch of press releases with it,
posted by singingfish at 4:47 PM on March 28, 2006

While the examples you give are all applications there are other solutions available. My friends and I use Google Groups for just this sort of task. Sign everyone up to the group and then send a single message. You can even compose and send the message from your local mail app, there is no need to actually use Google for anything except setting up (and maintaining) the group. Yahoo offers similar functionality.
posted by oddman at 7:23 PM on March 28, 2006