form-emailer

Sends emails from a template and a data file.

Introduction

I was tasked to send many similar emails. Each email had to be personalised with the recipients' names and the attachments differed as well (each recipient received their own Word document—see form-letterer.)

This program automatically sends emails. Here's how it works:

Installation

Windows

I have compiled an executable: just grab prompt.exe in dist folder and run it.

If you get an error "VCRUNTIME140.dll is missing", you'll have to download Microsoft's Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 here.

All other operating systems

git clone https://github.com/lieuzhenghong/form-emailer.git
cd form-emailer
python3 prompt.py

Must have Python 3 installed.

Data files

data.csv

You can add as many columns and rows as you want to your data.csv file. The only required column is the to column. All other columns don't have to be in your data.csv.

Here's an example of a data.csv file:

name	amount	to	cc	bcc	attachments
Jack	500	lzh@gmail.com, jack@email.com	pqrs@email2.com		test.png, test1.pdf
CKY	300	cky@gmail.com		pqrq@email3.com	test.png

to

(REQUIRED) Who the email will be sent to. Separate multiple emails with commas: guy1@email.com, guy2@email.com etc.

cc

Self-explanatory. See to.

bcc

Self-explanatory. See to.

attachments

All attachments must be in the attachments/ folder.

Most file types should be accepted.

Separate multiple attachments with commas: attach1.png, attach2.pdf.

email.txt

The first line of email.txt must be SUBJECT: XYZ

Anything in email.txt surrounded by `backticks` will be replaced by the corresponding column in data.csv.

For example, `name` would be replaced by Jack for the first email and CKY in the second.

Here's a sample email:

SUBJECT: Happy birthday to you!
Dear `name`,

Thanks for being our loyal customer and for giving us `amount` dollars.

Sincerely,
iGlobe Partners

This will become:

Email 1 of 2:

Dear Jack,

Thanks for being our loyal customer and for giving us 500 dollars.

Sincerely,
iGlobe Partners


Email 2 of 2:

Dear CKY,

Thanks for being our loyal customer and for giving us 300 dollars.

Sincerely,
iGlobe Partners

How to use the software

SMTP server URL (defaults to outlook.office365.com): 
SMTP server port (defaults to 587): 
Email address to send emails from: 
Password: 
Location of folder: 
Start index (if any?): 
End index (if any?): 
Send without previewing? (y/n):    

SMTP server URL

The SMTP url. Defaults to outlook.office365.com as this program was originally written for iGlobe Office which uses Office365 Outlook. If you're using other email providers, you'll have to change this. Gmail's one for example is smtp.google.com.

SMTP sever port

The SMTP port. Defaults to 587; same reason.

email address

(REQUIRED) Your email address.

password

(REQUIRED) Your password.

Location of folder

(REQUIRED) The main folder your data.csv, email.txt and attachments live in.

Start index and end index

None, either, or both of these parameters can be specified.

1. If neither are specified
2. If only index-start is specified
3. If only index-end is specified
4. If both are specified

If neither are specified

All emails will be selected.

If only index-start is specified

Only one email will be selected, which is the index-start. For example, --index-start 3 will select the third email.

If only index-end is specified

The first email to the index-endth email will be selected (inclusive). For example, --index-end 3 will select three emails, 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

If both are specified

Emails from index-start to index-end (inclusive) will be selected. For example, --index-start 2 --index-end 3 will select two emails: 2nd and 3rd.

Send without previewing

By default, this is not selected and the emails will be previewed before sending them. Type 'y' to send the emails directly.

Limitations

Outlook limits the number of emails you can send at 30/minute. Hence if you try to send too many, you'll get an error and not all emails will send. Work around this by using --index-start and --index-end to send emails in batches.