Getting Read or Delivery Receipts When Merging from Word to Outloo

[Amy E. Baggott]

We are currently using a third-party mass e-mailing program to contact our
exhibitors to remind them of deadlines, etc. It does a good job of tracking,
but we have a problem with the mail program saying they are delivered, but
the exhibitors saying they never got them. I realize that there is a
difference between never got them and "never got them," but we were thinking
of using a Word merge and Outlook to test whether the delivery or open rates
might be better. The only problem is that I cannot find anywhere in the
merge-to-email system that will allow me to request a delivery or read
receipt. It is important to us to be able to track whether our exhibitors
are receiving these reminders. Can the Word 2003/Outlook 2003 combination
give us this information, or will we only get the bounce notices?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

There's nothing in the built-in MailMerge to email that lets you do that,
but if you use the following process you could set the read receipt for all
the messages you merge:

1. Ensure there is nothing in the Outbox
2. Use Outlook Tools->Options->Mail Setup->Send/Receive to prevent Outlook
from sending (sorry, I have to leave you to work that one out!)
3. Perform the merge to email. There should now be an Outbox full of emails
waiting to go
4. Use an Outlook VBA macro such as the following to set the read receipt
for each message (you may need to adapt this for your system)

Sub SetReadReceiptRequest()
Dim mi As MailItem
For Each mi In
Outlook.GetNamespace("MAPI").GetDefaultFolder(olFolderOutbox).Items
mi.ReadReceiptRequested = True
mi.Save
mi.Send
Next
End Sub

5. Use Outlook Tools->Options->Mail Setup->Send/Receive to re-enable Outlook
send
6. Send!