Easiest way to extract large amount of email addresses from excel to send emails out

[cheaptonersucks]

Hi,

I have been given a spreadsheet with a very large amount of email addresses. What is the easiest way to extract all of the emails addresses into the Outlook web app, so that emails can be sent to all of the recipients please? The only stipulation is that each recipient must not be able to see any of the other email addresses.

 

Thanks in advance!

[mavhc]

Create a csv file with name, email, and catagory, give everyone the same category

 

In OWA go to People and Manage, Import Contacts. They'll probably end up in Other People.

 

Open that category, select all, lists>New contact list.

 

Then give it a name and put that name into BCC field.

[cheaptonersucks]

Thanks, I only have the email addresses of the parents and students. Can I create a new contact list with just an email address?

[jmcdermott]

Create a new column with a semi colon in it for each row, in next column combine the email and semi colon. highlight the column and copy then paste in outlook to/cc/bcc line.

 

bcc to hide addresses.

Edited March 14, 2022 by jmcdermott

[jthompson]

Depending on how many addresses there are, you might be able to just copy and paste the cells containing addresses into the Bcc field of a message in OWA. Definitely double-check that you've used Bcc if doing it this way!

I don't use OWA but that works in Gmail. Obviously if you have hundreds of addresses, they won't all go in one email as there will be limitations on how many addresses you can send to in one go. Probably okay for a few dozen.

[howartp]

Yeah we just select the email column, copy-paste into any text editor that can replace line-breaks (I guess Notepad++ will) then replace line-break with semicolon.

 

Then copy into new email (BCC) and it splits them as it pastes.

[DaveJ2717uk]

Mail merge would be the easiest surely using the excel file for the recipients and in word use mail merge to email messages and finish and merge to outlook to send. Sends individual messages, done this many times.

[EssentialRug]

Mail merge would be the easiest surely using the excel file for the recipients and in word use mail merge to email messages and finish and merge to outlook to send. Sends individual messages, done this many times.

 

Not sure mail merge works with OWA.

Edited March 14, 2022 by EssentialRug

[jthompson]

Well, copy and paste directly in Bcc is easier than a mail merge, but I guess it depends on the volume involved and whether incoming replies might start to confuse matters down the line.

[howartp]

Problem with mail-merge (for us at least) is that hotmail, gmail, etc detect you sending hundreds of emails and put it into spam.

 

I do my best to send one email BCC'd rather than several similar/identical emails by mail-merge, unless I do need to change the data within the email - in which case yes I use mail-merge as it was designed for.

 

Someone is probably going to say SPF, DKIM, DMARC - i'm sure we have all that setup but huge mail-merges still go to spam.

[jthompson]

Problem with mail-merge (for us at least) is that hotmail, gmail, etc detect you sending hundreds of emails and put it into spam.

 

I do my best to send one email BCC'd rather than several similar/identical emails by mail-merge, unless I do need to change the data within the email - in which case yes I use mail-merge as it was designed for.

 

Someone is probably going to say SPF, DKIM, DMARC - i'm sure we have all that setup but huge mail-merges still go to spam.

 

As a slightly off-topic aside, this got me thinking about sender reputation and I've noticed that Google and MS both offer some sender reputation reporting tools. https://www.gmail.com/postmaster/ and https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/. Not used them before but maybe worth exploring.

[Ditto]

If you don't have GSuite/Gmail, this may not be relevant, but I always used YAMM (Yet another MailMerge). It has the big advantage of offering some tracking info on top and very easy to get up and running. There used to be limits on number per day for the free version, but it wasn't really a problem. https://yamm.com/ if interested. Is there a free MS app equivalent?

[cheaptonersucks]

I imported all 500 external email addresses into my contacts in OWA, from a csv. I then created a “contact list” in OWA, but it doesn’t seem possible to add all 500 email addresses to my new contact list in one hit?? I can only seem to add each email to my new contact list individually!? Surely it must be possible to add large numbers of contacts to a contact list in one go? When I select all 500 contacts the option to “Add to list” becomes greyed out???

[jthompson]

Maybe try it in serveral smaller chunks?

[SamSK]

you can use maill merge and if you want to extract emails from the out of office replies that come back from an email campaign, you can use this tool

Haileads.com