Is it possible to add an attachment to an email mail merge?

Hi,

 

Actually, Mail merge doesn't support attachments.

 

To work around this behavior, publish the attachment to a Web site on the Internet. After you do this, provide the path link for the attachment in the body of the merged document that you are sending.

 

Or you can use a mail merge utility that is designed to send attachments or use VBA.

 

More information, you can refer to these articles:

 

You cannot add an attachment to an e-mail message as part of the mail-merge operation in Word

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/839372

 

Mail Merge Attachments

http://www.outlook-tips.net/archives/2007/20070209.htm

Please Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.

 

Best Regards,

 

Sally Tang

TechNet Subscriber Support in forum

If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com  

• Marked as answer by Sally Tang Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:07 AM

 

Hi,

 

I am writing to see how everything is going with this issue. Is the problem resolved? If there is anything I can do for you, please feel free to let me know.

 

Best Regards,

 

Sally Tang

TechNet Subscriber Support in forum

If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com   

Many thanks for that Sally. I didn't think you could add attachements to an email mail merge.

Publishing the attachment to a web site is fine, as long as it is the same attachment for all recipients of the mail merge. But, there are situations where each person is to receive a different attachment, e.g., scores from an assessment unique to them. In this case I am thinking that a VBA-based solution would be possible.

I had this issue crop up today. User had tried to do a mailmerge to 100+ recipients with an attached PDF. The attachment was not included with the sent emails and instead a PDF icon was embedded in the message body.

For expediency I quickly wrote a powershell script to replace the Outlook mailmerge function. This script is provided "As is" and requires modification to be usefull

# Send Personalised email to multiple recipients with attachments
# Written by David Summers 
# Lanquage PowerShell
# Creation Date 4/09/2012
# Version 1.0
# Create a new Object based on the content of a CSV File
# File contains the following named Cells in the top Row
# Title	| Name | Surname | Salutation | Position | Organisation | Email
	$objCVSSource = Import-Csv .\PeopleToMailTo.csv
# Declare variable for the SMTP Mail server
	$varSMTP = "YOURMAILSERVER"
# Loop through the content in the CSV File and execute against each row containing data
	foreach ($itmPerson in $objCVSSource) 
		{
			# Take the Cell data from the Email column for the recipient address
			# Hardcode this to a testing email address for testing
			$varTO = $itmPerson.Email
			
			# Optional variable for Blind copy to validate the sent email
			$varBCC = "<YourEmailAddressForTesting>"
			
			# Variable for Blind copy to validate the sent email
			$varFROM = "<YourSourceEmailAddress>"
			
			# Variable for the file to attach. Add more variables for multiple attachments
			$varFILE_1 = "./YourAttachment.pdf"
			
			# Enter quoted text for the subject line of the email message
			$varSubject = "YourSubjectHere" 
			
			# Body of the email message, use $varBody += to append more text to the initial $varBody variable
			# I have included some basic HTML formatting to set the font to Arial and provide a personalised address block
			# The next few lines take the Title, Name, Surname, Position and Organisation from the applicable cells in the CSV file
			$VarBody = ("<span style='font-family:arial'>" + $itmPerson.Title + " " + $itmPerson.Name + " " + $itmPerson.Surname + "</span><br>")
			$VarBody += ("<span style='font-family:arial'>" + $itmPerson.Position + "</span><br>")
			$VarBody += ("<span style='font-family:arial'>" + $itmPerson.Organisation + "</span><br>")
			$VarBody += ("<p><span style='font-family:arial'>" + "Dear " + $itmPerson.Name + "</span></p>")
			
			$VarBody += "<p style='font-family:arial'>This is the main body of the email</p>"
			#Command to send the actual email parsing through all of the above variables (take out the -Priority high flag if you do not want the email to be marked as high importance
			send-MailMessage -SmtpServer $varSMTP -To $varTO -bcc $varBCC -From $varFROM -Subject $varSubject -Body $body -BodyAsHtml -Attachment $varFILE_1 -Priority high
		}

Well the way I do it is by using word 2010 with excel and I add a column in the excel called: Attachment. That column has a different link to an attachment for each person which is located on my Dropbox. It works like a charm. No need to spend money in expensive 3rd pary software.

Perhaps a nice enhancement would be to allow the email mail merge to draft the emails in the user's draft mailbox, without actually sending them.  Letters, envelopes and labels are drafted for the user's review; why not stop the mail merge process BEFORE the emails are actually sent?  Granted, the user would need to actually send those emails, but it would also allow the user to edit the individual email and add attachments if necessary.  A large portion of the work would already been complete.  Just a thought ...

Can you please be more specific?  Walk me through this procedure?  I am trying to do exactly this and haven't a clue where to start.  Thanks!

A simple work around that I used, is to set outlook to work in offline mode. All the emails end up in the outbox folder. I can then change each one and add the attachments that I want. When you are ready change the offline mode to online and send/receive.  I know it is not very automated but it does give me all the control that I want.

If you're willing to do that much manual work, you can accomplish this by working offline.  Emails will be in your outbox, open and manipulate them as desired (add attachment), hit send again.

When all are ready go back online and they'll send.

FYI, if you've got editing to do it may indicate you haven't fully utilized the mailmerge abilities.  Hard to imagine anything you'd want to do that can't be done by the merge (other than attachments).