Automatically creating a Dear *sender's name*, in Outlook

Question

I would like to automate the process of creating the first part of an email, namely "Dear sender's name" in Outlook. I believe it is possible as the name can be derived from the name field of the person who has sent the email (i.e. name field [ email field ] which appears at the top of the email) . How do I go about accomplishing this?

Answer 1

This is a Mail Merge feature and the Microsoft Outlook blog runs through how to set that up

The basic steps to creating a mail merged e-mail from Outlook are:

1. Select your contacts in Outlook
2. Select to send an e-mail in the Mail Merge dialog and choose your subject
3. Compose your e-mail in Word – inserting fields where appropriate
4. Preview and Send

Read about the details on the blog article linked above.

Answer 2

Sub InsertNameInReply()

Dim Msg As Outlook.MailItem
Dim MsgReply As Outlook.MailItem
Dim strGreetName As String
Dim lGreetType As Long

 ' set reference to open/selected mail item
On Error Resume Next
Select Case TypeName(Application.ActiveWindow)
Case "Explorer"
    Set Msg = ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)
Case "Inspector"
    Set Msg = ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
Case Else
End Select
On Error GoTo 0

If Msg Is Nothing Then GoTo ExitProc

strGreetName = Mid$(Msg.SenderName, 2 + InStr(1, Msg.SenderName, ", ", Len(Msg.SenderName)) - 1)

Set MsgReply = Msg.Reply

With MsgReply
    .Subject = "RE:" & Msg.Subject
    .HTMLBody = "<span style=""font-family : verdana;font-size : 10pt""><p>Hello " & strGreetName & ",</p></span>" & .HTMLBody
    .Display
End With

ExitProc:
Set Msg = Nothing
Set MsgReply = Nothing
End Sub