Automate Mail.app using text files

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

I would like to send weekly email updates to a group of people not in my Apple Addressbook.

I am a teacher at the community college and I get 100 or more new students each semester, so I don’t want to have them entered in the Addressbook (cause editing would be a nightmare). My hope is to send out weekly announcements that occur from semester to semester auto-magically using iCal and Mail.App I would only send the messages to 20 students at a time, since I teach 5 different courses. The email addresses for one class are stored in a csv file. The email message is stored in an external text file.

Can I use a CSV file that contains the email addresses by Applescript? If so, how would I go about this?

Thanks for any help!

Dennis

Model: eMac 1.25GHz
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Operating System: Mac OS X (10.4)

#2

I’m not sure what part you’re having problems with. Reading the file, parsing the addresses, setting the recipients in the email message you’ve created? There are examples of each of these available here.

I’m sure somebody here will know a good way to get CSV parsed into a list. I usually just open the csv in excel and export to text. Then you can set applescript’s text item delims to \r and it’s easy to move your text into a list to use when adding recipients.

You might want to start just automating an email message to yourself. Then add in the “reading address list in from a file” part. Post your code and let us know if you have any trouble finding or implementing examples.