Frequently Asked Questions

Message Templates

(MT1) Q: Why is the email message sometimes blue and sometimes black?
A: The message displays in blue when CustomMailer is in View as Template mode and displays in black when it is in View as Message mode. View as Template mode lets you edit the message template which will affect all recipients, whereas View as Message shows the actual, customized message that will be sent to a selected recipient, which changes for each row of your mailing list. Either the View menu or the buttons to the left of the message body let you select which mode to be in. CustomMailer automatically goes into View as Template mode when 1) no recipient is selected in the mailing list or 2) there is an error in expanding the message tags, such as a tag in the message not found in the mailing list or a bad email address.

(MT2) Q: I changed my message but it keeps going back to the original, why?
A: If you change the message while the message is displayed in black, you have only changed the message for the currently selected recipient, not the message template itself (this is how CustomMailer works). In this case, sending this message or clicking on another (or the same) recipient causes the message to be re-expanded from the still-unchanged message template. To change the message template so the changes affect all recipients, choose Template mode (either using the View as Template menu item or the Template button to the left of the message body) and make your changes while the message is displayed in blue. You may wish to save these changes in a new message template file or replace your old one. CustomMailer will warn you if you try to read in a new message template or exit the application without saving changes to your current message template.

(MT3) Q: Can I change the relative sizes of the message and the mailing list?
A: Yes. You can resize the split panel between the message and the mailing list by dragging the horizontal bar that is drawn between them. You can also resize the main CustomMailer window. CustomMailer remembers your most recently selected window size, screen location, and split panel setting for the next time you run CustomMailer. You can also click on the "enlarge" box (middle box in the right hand side of the CustomMailer window title bar) to make CustomMailer fill your screen.

(MT4) Q: Can I embed graphics in my message? Can I use different fonts in my message?
A: Yes if you use HTML mail (see below). Regular (non-HTML) messages conform to the basic internet email protocol of plain text with no embedded graphics and only plain, single font ASCII text.

(MT5) Q: Can I cut-copy-and-paste between other other applications and my message?
A: Yes (either as plain text or as HTML source).

(MT6) Q: Is there a limit to the size of a message that can be sent?
A: Not any more. Prior to CustomMailer 4.0, we used a TextArea component for the message body that imposed a 32K character limit (similar to the limitation in Notepad). CustomMailer 4.0 uses a new TextArea component that removes this limitation.

(MT7) Q: I'm using | (vertical bar) as my tag indicator character. What if I want to insert an actual | in my message?
A: Type two vertical bars in a row, with nothing between them, to indicate that you want an actual | inserted in your message.

(MT8) Q: How do I include Internet hyperlinks in my message?
A: There are two ways to do this. One is to use HTML mail. This allows you to compose a regular web page as your email message, complete with rich text, links, images, sounds, CGI scripts, even applets. However, there are some drawbacks to using HTML mail: 1) it is harder to set up and 2) not all email readers support it. Please review the section on HTML Mail and study the sample message SampleHTMLMessageTemplate.html so you see what is involved.

The second way is less powerful but works for any plain text message. Any time you type a URL string (e.g., http://www.wildcrest.com) in the body of an email message, almost all email readers will convert this to a clickable link. When the recipient gets your message, the link will be underlined and highlighted in color like a usual link and clicking on it will open the URL either in their email reader or in a separate browser window depending on their email software. You can also include URLs to .gif or .jpg files (clicking on them displays the image), .wav files (clicking on it plays the sound), .zip, .doc, or .exe files (clicking on them downloads the file and asks if you want to save or open it), etc. You can even use special URL commands like mailto: (clicking on it opens a preaddressed mail message), news: (clicking on it opens a newsgroup), or ftp: (clicking on it causes a file transfer). See "Useful Tips" under HTML Mail for more details.

(MT9) Q: My line wrap looks wrong, I appear to be sending messages with regular lines alternating with short lines, why?
A: CustomMailer has a feature that it will automatically "wrap" long lines after, typically, 72 characters (this value may be set in Preferences). In general, you are not supposed to type carriage returns ("Enter") as you type your message into CustomMailer, unless you really want to force a "hard" carriage return such as the start of a paragraph or to insert blank lines. If you did manually enter carriage returns for each line (or perhaps cut-and-pasted your message from another application that inserted the carriage returns), you might have carriage returns in your message at the end of every line and your lines might be somewhat longer, say, 90 characters. In that case when the message is sent, CustomMailer would wrap these lines at 72 characters, breaking each line into a full line followed by partial line containing the remainder of your line. To fix this problem, edit your message to remove all the extra carriage returns and let CustomMailer handle the line wrap for you.

(MT10) Q: The line wrap in template mode has different line lengths than in message mode, why?
A: In template mode, CustomMailer wraps the body of your message to the width of your window as a convenience. When you switch to message mode, CustomMailer wraps the body of your message to the line wrap value set in Preferences, which is how the message will actually go out. The wrap to the width you specify in Preferences doesn't happen until you go into message mode because it is only after all tags and macros have been expanded that CustomMailer can perform the line wrap correctly. Also, CustomMailer does not rewrap if you subsequently make manual entries in your message body, so you can control the length of lines precisely if, for example, you want a long unbroken line for a URL.

(MT11) Q: Can CustomMailer send emails in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, German, French, etc.?
A: Yes, CustomMailer 4.0 supports full Unicode (double-byte) character sets in the email message body, headers, and mailing list, and automatically converts to the industry-standard UTF-8 encoding for sending Unicode-based email over the Internet. In addition, extensions are available to support reading message templates and mailing lists and sending messages in other international character sets such as Big5, GB2312, and Shift-JIS, as well as displaying messages and mailing lists using ideographic fonts appropriate for Asian locales. See "Internationalization" for more details..

Mailing lists

(ML1) Q: Can I edit the mailing list inside CustomMailer?
A: Yes. You can add, delete, and edit mailing list rows and columns, append other mailing lists, and start new mailing lists from scratch.

(ML2) Q: What is the easiest way to create a mailing list?
A: Creating your mailing list inside CustomMailer is the quickest solution. However, a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel is an effective tool for maintaining and manipulating mailing lists (see "Mailing Lists" and "Tips for Effective Use"). A database such as Microsoft Access, Oracle, or MySQL is useful for more sophisticated customer database needs, including network shared access and complex query commands.

(ML3) Q: Can I save my mailing list back into the same file name from which it was read in?
A: Yes. This will, of course, replace your old mailing list with the new one, so make sure this is what you want to do. As a safety measure, you will be asked to confirm this action.

(ML4) Q: Can I export the mailing list back to my database?
A: No, the component we use for reading the database is read-only. You'll need to export the mailing list to a file and import from there into your database using your database client program.

(ML5) Q: Can I change the file (or database) containing my mailing list while CustomMailer is running and have it take effect?
A: Yes, but not automatically. You can force a re-read of your mailing list by choosing the "Reload Mailing List" command under the File menu, or equivalently, by choosing the "Open Mailing List" command under the File menu and selecting the first item in the file "history" list or selecting the database DSN, whichever you were using most recently. If you have also made changes to your mailing list that is already inside CustomMailer, you will be asked if you wish to save these changes. Obviously, if you save this back into the same file name, you will overwrite any changes made there, so you need to be careful about which changes you really want. Changing any of the mailing list parameters in Preferences will also cause a reread of your mailing list file or database. NOTE: re-reading your mailing list also causes the "SendStatus" values to be reset to their original values and clears your "duplicate history" information used to detect whether you've already sent mail to a given address.

(ML6) Q: How do I import my address book from Netscape Communicator?
A: Netscape Communicator can export your address box as tab-delimited text. Under the "Communicator" menu, choose "Address Book". Then under the "File" menu, choose "Export". Change "Save as type" to "Tab-delimited (*.txt)", provide a file name ending in .txt, and hit "Save". In CustomMailer, under "Settings" menu, choose "Preferences". Go to the "Mailing List" tab, make sure the field delimiter is set to "tab". Communicator doesn't export the column headings, so uncheck the box for "Use first line as column names" (you can subsequently rename the columns to better names if you like). Or you can edit your exported address book .txt file and add the following new first line:
DisplayName*LastName*FirstName*Notes*City*State*Email*Title*Department*Address*Zip*Country*WorkPhone*FaxPhone*HomePhone*Organization*Nickname*CellularPhone*PagerPhone
This should be all on one line with a tab in place of each "*".

(ML7) Q: How do I import my address book from Microsoft Outlook?
A: Microsoft Outlook can export your address box as tab-delimited text. Under the "File" menu, choose "Import and Export" which brings up a Wizard. Choose "Export to a File" and hit "Next". In the next window, select "Contacts" and hit "Next". In the next window, select "Tab Separated Values (Windows)" which is the last item. In the next window, specify a file name ending in .txt, then hit "Next" and "Finish". In CustomMailer, under "Settings" menu, choose "Preferences". Go to the "Mailing List" tab, make sure the field delimiter is set to "tab". Microsoft Outlook does automatically export the column headings (81 in all!), so leave the "Use first line as column names" checked. However, Microsoft Outlook inserts 5 extra lines after the first column headings line. You can either delete these 5 rows in CustomMailer or delete them in Notepad or Wordpad in advance of running CustomMailer.

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