{"id":10929,"date":"2019-11-14T14:22:34","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T13:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/?p=10929"},"modified":"2019-11-14T14:22:34","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T13:22:34","slug":"how-to-create-a-series-letter-in-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/2019\/11\/14\/how-to-create-a-series-letter-in-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"how to create a series letter in 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">you want to create letters from a &#8220;contacts database&#8221; sitting in a Google spreadsheet (or similar), right?! (because that looks sexy, right?!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">that&#8217;s called &#8220;series letter&#8221;. for decades people have been doing that using software.<br>what I want to tell you is this: do not get anybody to write software for you to\u00a0do that. that already exists \u2013 do not create software, that already exists, don&#8217;t be stubborn and create something that suits your needs just a little \/ &#8220;far&#8221; better than the implementations, that already exist. that is called &#8220;not invented here&#8221;:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Not_invented_here\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Not_invented_here<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">don&#8217;t do it like that!!! <strong>this<\/strong> is &#8220;the right way&#8221;:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Right_Way\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Right_Way<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>create a &#8220;list&#8221; for the group \/ set of people, that you want to address,<\/li><li>put them all on &#8220;BCC&#8221; (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Blind_carbon_copy) (that&#8217;s really important \u2013 most of the time they must not see each other),<\/li><li>address yourself as &#8220;To&#8221;,<\/li><li>and write an e-mail as you would &#8220;in the first place&#8221;!<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">how to create that list?<br>Google Mail:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>create &#8220;yet another&#8221; &#8220;label&#8221; in your Google Contacts,<\/li><li>use that label for each of them,<\/li><li>go to that label, <\/li><li>select &#8220;all of them&#8221;, <\/li><li>select &#8220;send e-mail&#8221;, <\/li><li>move &#8220;them all&#8221; to BCC,<\/li><li>\u2026<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">too simple? too inexpensive? alright, buy me a pizza or two! you need to spend more money?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/UNICEF\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/UNICEF<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/M\u00e9decins_Sans_Fronti\u00e8res\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/M\u00e9decins_Sans_Fronti\u00e8res<\/a><\/li><li>\u2026<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">too difficult? let&#8217;s go through all the steps together next time we meet!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">uuuuuuh, you don&#8217;t want to &#8220;give Google&#8221; all those valuable addresses? alright, what about Posteo?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Posteo\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Posteo<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">do you know anybody with a Posteo address? go and ask them! create you address book there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">don&#8217;t keep your address book as spreadsheet, that&#8217;s old-school, that causes lots of work, that causes pain, that is just not the way to do it, &#8220;<em>That&#8217;s (<strong>not<\/strong>) the way to do it!<\/em>&#8220;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>you want to create letters from a &#8220;contacts database&#8221; sitting in a Google spreadsheet (or similar), right?! (because that looks sexy, right?!) that&#8217;s called &#8220;series letter&#8221;. for decades people have been doing that using software.what I want to tell you is this: do not get anybody to write software for you to\u00a0do that. that already [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[387],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-office-life"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paO0kP-2Qh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10933,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10929\/revisions\/10933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jochen.hayek.name\/blog-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}