Hi all,

Is it possible to email a whole group of people in one go?
Well actually I say group, but I cant figure how to make one?...ive tried to set up a group smartlist with the parameter of all people in the "friends" catagory, but nothing happens?..no group appears?
Ive also tried selecting the contact smartlist of 'friends' to email them all but it only lets you write email to an individual.

Thanks

Hello!
You can email from a Group, but it sounds like you have a Friends smartlist in Contacts so let's work with that one.
1. click on the Friends smartlist
2. select all of the Contacts in the list
3. if you want their emails to go into the Bcc field, hold the option key down while you select Actions>Write Email
otherwise just select Actions>Write Email and everyone's email address will go into the To: field
3. alternative: if you have your Contextual Menu preferences set up to include the Write Email option, you can right-click on the selected Contacts and choose Write Email. Remember that if you want their emails to go into the Bcc field, hold the option key while you right-click and choose Write Email

Now, the trouble with doing it this way rather than creating a Letter Template is that you can't then customize the email with Dear Bob for Bob's email and Dear John for John's email, etc. It just creates 1 outgoing email and pushes everyone's addresses into it.

I like creating a Letter Template so that the email is personalized to the recipient. Once the Letter Template is created, you have a couple of options after selecting your Contacts:
1. select Actions>Merge>Write Letter in Daylite, or
2. if you have the Write Letter icon in your menubar, you can click on that, or
3. if you've set up your Contextual Menu preferences you can right-click on the selected Contacts and choose Write Letter in Daylite

HTH,
Cynthia

AHA!...thanks Cynthia...that's sussed it, I thought letter templates were just for printed ones..teach me for not reading the instructions!

Ill have to read up about the groups too..I must be doing something wrong.

thx again

Hi Andy,

Cynthia covered the main part of you question nicely, but I thought I'd add a little explanation of how to create a group, since you weren't able to figure that out yet.

First select the contacts that you want to be in the group. Then go to the Create Menu (or use contextual menus if you've set that up) and select "Create New Group for X Objects". (There's even a toolbar shortcut for that too!). It will ask for a name, categroy, etc. for the group. Now switch to the "Groups" view and you'll see your new group there.

Ohh Ive got it now...thanks Howard....Ive just tried to create a group smart list though by setting it "IS contact - catagory = family" which I have about 10 people with 'family' as the catagory, but when it creates it, the smart list is empty?

Works fine your way though...just not Smart way?!

Hi Andy,

I think you may be "mixing your metaphors" a bit, at least as far as what Daylite can do.

I checked and don't see a way within Groups to have a Smartlist with the criteria you described - there's no "is contact" option. Are you doing that within the Groups view?

Are you trying to have a group and then a "sub-group" within that group? For instance the main group be "Humans" and the sub group "Family"?

Perhaps the better way is to stay within the Contacts view and use Categories and Keywords to accomplish the Smart List filtering you desire? For instance the category could be "Humans" and the keywords "Family". Then you could make a smartlist with those as the selection criteria.

Sorry Howard, its just how I typed it, makes no sense sorry.

Here is a screen grab of my group smart list...as you can see, even with the parameters set, no one is in the group?

Ah, that makes more sense to me now and I see what is happening. The main problem here is a misunderstanding of what this smart list is able to do. It will "filter" the list of groups in the first column to those Groups that have contacts with the categroy "Family", but it won't create a new Group for you. I think you would need a different approach as I mentioned in the previous post.

I suggest that you use the Contacts view and create a Smart List there which will show only contact's with a category of "Family". Then you'll have a list you can email from more easily. Cynthia outlined the procedure nicely. Just be sure to do it all while in a Contact view smartlis, not Groups.

OIC now!...right oh..Ill create them from the contacts then.

Thx for the help!

Hi everyone,
I've been following this thread and appreciate the solutions, however, I have a situation where "just satying in Contacts view" won't work for me. You see, I'd like a group that consists of not only contacts, but also organizations if they are in the same category. For example, I have a category I call "Vendor" which is for repair people, etc. Some of these are contacts, i.e. sole proprietors while some are organizations. If I'm looking for a plumber, for instance, i want to be able to view a list of contacts AND organizations which are in the category "Vendor" and also have the keyword "plumber". Any suggestions on how to accomplish this? Basically I don't want to have to look in both Contacts view AND then Organizations view to find the pertinent info. Thanks.

Sorry, but I don't know of a way to have a group list that mixes both contacts and orgs in one view, but there are 2 approaches that may help.

One is to be sure that every contact has a corresponding organization. Then in either view you'd see everything you need to. You'd have to create an org for every contact that doesn't have one. If you don't want to do that you could theoretically create a new organization called "Master Plumbers" and then drag-link all the contacts that are plumbers to it. Then in Org view you could view that org and see all the plumbers (best seen in 2 or 3 pane view).

Another approach is to use the Fast Find window. If you search on the keyword "Plumber" it will return a list of all contacts AND orgs that have that keyword. The only problem is that if you have a friend named George Plumber, and he is not a plumber, he will be in the list too! That probably is not a problem. Now you've got a list with both which is fine for many purposes, but perhaps is a little limited in what you can do compared to a main list in contacts or orgs - not being able to do a bulk email from there, for example.

I hope this helps!

Thanks! Very grateful!