# MS Outlook question

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-outlook-question/551787>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 28, 2010, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-outlook-question/551787 "2010-08-28T14:21:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rainy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@rainy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rainy)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-outlook-question/551787/1 "2010-08-28T14:21:10Z")

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Is there any way to have outlook key off of who is on the recipient list and generate some default text in the body of the message?

Here’s the specifics; my wife has to send out meeting invites to colleagues across the globe inviting them to attend a teleconference. Her company uses one of these conferencing services, where the participants call into a number that is unique to my wife and enter a participant code. This allows the company to track where the conference and toll charges are coming from. Here’s the rub, there’s a different call in number for every country, and the participants vary from meeting to meeting based on the subject of the conference call.

So I thought it might be possible to create some way of opening a message or invite that would auto-generate a list of the necessary numbers that participants would need based on who was on the recipient list. If this can be automated it will be a huge boon for my wife to eliminate the tedious task of manually reviewing each invite to see where the participant are then cut and paste in that country’s call-in number.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-rainy

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**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-outlook-question/551787/2 "2010-08-28T15:07:51Z")

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I don’t have a reliable answer to your question (I suspect you would need to do some sort of mail merge but I am not sufficiently proficient to give instructions), but are there a great many countries involved in your teleconferences?

I have been in on a few international teleconferences, and the meeting organizer just listed a bunch of countries with the appropriate phone number for each at the end of the message. I seem to recall at least a half dozen countries and phone numbers, but since the list was at the end of the message it didn’t really clutter it up.

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**Author:** ![Severian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@Severian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Severian)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2010, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-outlook-question/551787/3 "2010-08-28T15:15:38Z")

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You might be out of luck, unless you know some VBA or CDO. I don’t think you can use Mail Merge on meeting invites, plus, mail merge would send each recipient an individual message.

Could she send a generic meeting invite, and then follow it up with a tailored message to each recipient? You could use mail merge to do that. That makes it easier for your wife, but the meeting attendees would have to keep track of a separate message for teleconference information…

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**Author:** ![rainy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@rainy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rainy)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-outlook-question/551787/4 "2010-08-29T02:44:06Z")

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> [@Canadjun](#):
>
> but are there a great many countries involved in your teleconferences?

The potential is there for it to be a bear. She has two pages of call-in numbers.