Keeping track of mail merges

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Mark R Penn - 14 Feb 2006 15:51 GMT

I have about 21000 contacts in a folder in Outlook, and will mail (physical
mail, not e-mail) about 100 of them each week. I know how to select the
contacts in Outlook and do the actual merge, but can't find any way to keep
track of which contacts have and have not received a given mailing, so that
I don't include them the following week.

I was intending to use the journal first, but that would be a manual process
per contact which is too much for 100 contacts, and would still leave me to
read the journal each time.

I then thought of using flags, so red would be for week one, green for week
two etc in whatever cycle I want, and then view by flag, but although I can
use the coloured flags contact by contact, there appears to be no way to
apply a given coloured flag to a whole group of contacts at once. I can only
add flags to a toolbar in e-mail folders, not in contact folders.

So any ideas? How do people keep track of which contacts have and have not
received a mailing, and when?

Thanks,

Mark

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Charles Kenyon - 14 Feb 2006 16:50 GMT

How about categories rather than flags?

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Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/ which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

>I have about 21000 contacts in a folder in Outlook, and will mail (physical
>mail, not e-mail) about 100 of them each week. I know how to select the
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
>
> Mark

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Mark R Penn - 14 Feb 2006 17:19 GMT

Well I did think of that, but already use categories in the folder for other
purposes, so it would be a bit difficult I think.

In fact flags don't work anyway, even if I spend the time manually applying
them to each contact, because there's no way to group contacts by flag
colour - only whether or not they have a flag.

For now I've created a sub folder for each week, and just drag the relevant
contacts to that, but it seams to me there must be a more elegant way to do
it.

Cheers,

Mark

> How about categories rather than flags?
>>I have about 21000 contacts in a folder in Outlook, and will mail
[quoted text clipped - 20 lines]
>>
>> Mark

Reply to this Message

Judy Gleeson MVP Outlook - 15 Feb 2006 09:35 GMT

I would add field in the Contacts folder showing the date of each
campaign.

Phone List View | Field Chooser | New Field | make it a Date field and
call it
whatever makes sense to you.

If you group by that field, you can quickly populate it by selecting
people and dragging them into that group - see my footer!

Judy Gleeson [MVP Outlook]
Acorn Training and Consulting
www.acorntraining.com.au

Everyone - turn on your Advanced Toolbars and learn how to use the Field
Chooser and Group by Box!!

> Well I did think of that, but already use categories in the folder for
other
> purposes, so it would be a bit difficult I think.
>
> In fact flags don't work anyway, even if I spend the time manually
applying
> them to each contact, because there's no way to group contacts by flag
> colour - only whether or not they have a flag.
>
> For now I've created a sub folder for each week, and just drag the
relevant
> contacts to that, but it seams to me there must be a more elegant way to
do
> it.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark
>
> "Charles Kenyon" <wordfaq@nospam.addbalance.com> wrote in message
> news:ewQxVbYMGHA.648@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
>> How about categories rather than flags?
>> --
>> Charles Kenyon
>>
>> Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word
>>
>> Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
>> Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide
>>
>> See also the MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/ which is awesome!
>> --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
>> This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
>> and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
>> from my ignorance and your wisdom.
>>
>>
>> "Mark R Penn" <spamyourself@notme.con> wrote in message
>> news:u28wn7XMGHA.1424@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
>>>I have about 21000 contacts in a folder in Outlook, and will mail
>>>(physical mail, not e-mail) about 100 of them each week. I know how to
>>>select the contacts in Outlook and do the actual merge, but can't find
any
>>>way to keep track of which contacts have and have not received a given
>>>mailing, so that I don't include them the following week.
>>>
>>> I was intending to use the journal first, but that would be a manual
>>> process per contact which is too much for 100 contacts, and would
still
>>> leave me to read the journal each time.
>>>
>>> I then thought of using flags, so red would be for week one, green for
>>> week two etc in whatever cycle I want, and then view by flag, but
>>> although I can use the coloured flags contact by contact, there
appears
>>> to be no way to apply a given coloured flag to a whole group of
contacts
>>> at once. I can only add flags to a toolbar in e-mail folders, not in
>>> contact folders.
>>>
>>> So any ideas? How do people keep track of which contacts have and have
>>> not received a mailing, and when?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

Reply to this Message

Charles Kenyon - 15 Feb 2006 19:43 GMT

Adding categories would do the same thing without having to add a field,
wouldn't it?

Signature

> I would add field in the Contacts folder showing the date of each
> campaign.
[quoted text clipped - 86 lines]
> >
> >

Reply to this Message

Judy Gleeson MVP - Outlook - 16 Feb 2006 00:37 GMT

Yep but that's probably not the best use of Categories. Don't you have
people already Categorised? I would use Categories for the type of person.
Then if I want to email all of a certain type (Category) about something
(outside of the regular campaign) I can.

Judy Gleeson - MVP Outlook
Acorn Training and Consulting
Canberra, Australia

see what Outlook training can do to improve productivity:
www.acorntraining.com.au/pdfdocs/ProductivITwithOutlook.pps

www.acorntraining.com.au/productivit.htm

> Adding categories would do the same thing without having to add a field,
> wouldn't it?
[quoted text clipped - 102 lines]
> > >
> > >

Reply to this Message

Charles Kenyon - 16 Feb 2006 21:52 GMT

Yes, but I often have people with multiple categories assigned. You are not
limited to just one.

Signature

> Yep but that's probably not the best use of Categories. Don't you have
> people already Categorised? I would use Categories for the type of
[quoted text clipped - 126 lines]
>> > >
>> > >

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Mark R Penn - 18 Feb 2006 01:27 GMT

Thanks Judy. I've become so conditioned to NOT adding any custom fields
because just about every item in Outlook gets synced with my Pocket PC, and
custom fields don't sync, that that idea didn't even occur to me - I was
literally thinking "why the h*££ doesn't Outlook have a Mailed Date field,
forgetting I could just make my own!! I'm not syncing those contacts, so it
works fantastically well.

Charles, the issue with using categories is that I already have the contacts
grouped by category (to help me decide who to include in each weeks
campaign), so can't then also group by category to see who got mailed in a
given week. In other words I could see a group for "mailed on 17-02-2006"
OK, but then wouldn't see any category groups within that. With Judy's idea
I can group by the new field, and then ALSO by category, and the two retain
different uses.

Mark

> Yes, but I often have people with multiple categories assigned. You are
> not limited to just one.
[quoted text clipped - 131 lines]
>>> > >
>>> > >

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