Answer a collection of emails in a batch using Outlook

3

1

I've received a big load of emails. I want to answer them all with the same message without the recipients knowing of the other receivers. Any recommendations on how to achieve this?

Felix Andersen

Posted 2009-09-21T08:30:10.363

Reputation: 415

Answers

1

The quickest way I can think of is an outlook vba macro, provided you don't mind Outlook throwing a bit of a tantrum that you're automating it - it'll warn you that it might be a virus.

Something like the following

Public Sub test()
    Dim ns As NameSpace
    Set ns = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Dim outlookFolder As Object, innerFolder As MAPIFolder
    Set outlookFolder = ns.Folders("Mailbox - Your mailbox name")
    Debug.Print outlookFolder.Name
    Set innerFolder = outlookFolder.Folders("Inbox")
    Debug.Print vbTab & innerFolder.Name
    Dim emailItem As MailItem
    For Each emailItem In innerFolder.Items
        If emailItem.Subject = "Test" Then
            Dim replyEmail As MailItem
            Set replyEmail = emailItem.Reply
            replyEmail.Body = "Test 2"
            replyEmail.Display
            replyEmail.Send
        End If

    Next it
End Sub

So for the above, for each email it finds in your inbox with the subject "Test", it'll send a reply to the original sender with the body "Test 2".

Andy

Posted 2009-09-21T08:30:10.363

Reputation: 646

5

Use bcc (blind carbon copy). Add all the recipients to that field and they won't know about all the other people you've also sent the mail to.

alex

Posted 2009-09-21T08:30:10.363

Reputation: 16 172

@alex exactly what i was gonna say – admintech – 2009-09-21T08:41:11.883

That forces me to put them in my address book which I want to avoid if possible. – Felix Andersen – 2009-09-21T08:52:24.967

No, just copy/paste their addresses from the incoming emails into the BCC field... – Wim ten Brink – 2009-09-21T08:55:49.483

Yes, but the amount of emails I want to answer makes manual copy/paste for every address a tremendous and tiresome task. – Felix Andersen – 2009-09-21T09:03:38.627

I don't think you can do it any other way in Outlook. In Lotus Notes, for instance, you can choose a bunch of emails from different people and press Reply to all; that way, the To field is automatically filled from all the selected emails. In Outlook such a thing is not possible. – alex – 2009-09-21T09:13:28.387