# Question about the best way to mass email different stuff to different people
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-best-way-to-mass-email-different-stuff-to-different-people/393948
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 27, 2007, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-best-way-to-mass-email-different-stuff-to-different-people/393948 "2007-02-27T23:21:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Rattlehead02](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rattlehead02)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2007, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-best-way-to-mass-email-different-stuff-to-different-people/393948/1 "2007-02-27T23:21:34Z")
First off, these people want the emails, it’s not spam, I swear! 🙂
Anyway, my company produces reports that we typically print and mail to customers. But we also would like to email links for them to be able to download them from our website.
We have about 30 different clients and each has a unique userid and password to access the page containing the different reports.
As far as emailing them, the only way I can think to do it is to send 30 individual emails saying “Hey Bob, here is your id and password.” “Hey Betty, here is your unique id and password.” etc.
While not too crazy for 30 people it seems there might be a better way.
And in case it matters our site is hosted by [simplehost.com](http://simplehost.com) and we have a folder for the PDF files, and 2 folders for different excel files. We used the simplehost interface to give users permissions to different folders.
Thanks in advance!
jeff
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2007, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-best-way-to-mass-email-different-stuff-to-different-people/393948/2 "2007-02-27T23:33:44Z")
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I wrote an MS Access demo application to email reports to interested parties, each one customised to the recipient. If that sounds like it might be any use, [here](http://www.gurman.co.uk/mdb/Custom_email_reports.zip) is a link to download it.
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### Author:  [@Rattlehead02](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rattlehead02)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2007, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-best-way-to-mass-email-different-stuff-to-different-people/393948/3 "2007-02-28T00:39:22Z")
Actually, all I need is something as simple as this:
* * *
Dear valued customer,
The link for year end reports is [www.greatkickassreports.com/yearend](http://www.greatkickassreports.com/yearend)
Your userid to access the reports is \
Your password to access the reports is \
Sincerely,
The Greatest Company Ever
* * *
And now that I type that out it seems to me that if I have a spreadsheet with users, user emails addresses and user id/passwords that outlook should be able to do that, right? I’m using outlook 2003.
If it is simply a matter of outlook and excel can anyone point me in the right direction to get it working?
Thanks!
Jeff
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2007, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-best-way-to-mass-email-different-stuff-to-different-people/393948/4 "2007-02-28T01:10:13Z")
I would do it in FileMaker.
Loop
Send Mail, no dialog [To: Table::emailaddress; Subject: “Hello” Body: “Greetings and salutations!” & “¶” & “¶” & “You might find it useful to click the following links which lead to info specific to your account.” & “¶” & “¶” & “[http://www.domain.com/serverfolder/](http://www.domain.com/serverfolder/)”& Table::userspecificdocumentcode&“.html”]
Go to Record [Next, Exit After Last]
End Loop
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### Author:  [@hr\_realist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hr_realist)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2007, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-best-way-to-mass-email-different-stuff-to-different-people/393948/5 "2007-02-28T03:37:33Z")
If you are only looking at 20-30 people, word (XP) can do a mail merge to outlook - this may well be fastest and easiest for you to manage.
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### Author:  [@illoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/illoe)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2007, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-best-way-to-mass-email-different-stuff-to-different-people/393948/6 "2007-02-28T03:58:47Z")
You could also use the concatenate function in Excel. Say your column A has their names, B has user ID, and C has passwords. In column D, you can enter the following:
=“Dear “&A1&”, blah blah your user ID is: “&B1&” and your password is”&C1&" etc. Yours etc., Lily"