Import multiple records with the same email address

AY Mail 2. Professional and Corporate Editions
Data managing skills required.

AY Mail always remove duplicate addresses from recipient lists. However, you may have multiple records with the same email address, and you want to import information from all of these records. For example, you may have your data entered into an Excel spreadsheet like this one:

This spreadsheet contains records of magazine subscriptions. Some people have subscribed to multiple publications. As a result, the spreadsheet contains multiple records with the same email address. For example, Kate Johnson (kate@school.com) subscribed to both Parents and Popular Science.

If you want to send out emails about the subscriptions, you would need to inform Kate about both subscriptions. However, if you simply import the data into AY Mail, the duplicates will be removed, and only one record will be left for Kate.

To resolve the situation, AY Mail has a special import mode. This mode merges data from the multiple records with the same email address into a single combined record. To use this mode, you need to do the following:

1. Select File->Import->Recipients List from the main menu. The Import dialog will appear.

2. Select Create a new project. To use combined records, you always need to create a new project.

3. Under Handle duplicate addresses select the Create combined records option:

4. Select the mode that you want to use for Import and click on the OK button. The Import Source dialog will appear:

3. Select the import source. For example, if you import from Excel, select ODBC Database and click on the OK button. Navigate to your file and follow on-screen instructions until you arrive to the following dialog:

4. Here you need to select the data fields that you want to be merged. For example, the Name field doesn't have to be merged because it is the same in all records, so it is enough to have one copy of the field. The Subscription and Expiration Date fields are different in every record, and you need to instruct AY Mail to create multiple copies of these fields. The multiple copies of these fields will be filled with data from different records.

Here you can see that The Subscription and Expiration Date fields are moved to the right side, and that the maximum number of merged records is set to 5.

5. When you are finished with the import, you can look at the recipient list:

You can see that AY Mail created a single Name field but there are five copies of the Subscription field, which are named Subscription1, Subscription2 etc. Similarly, the Expiration Date field is copied five times and these five fields are named Expiration Date1, Expiration Date2 etc.

When the data are imported, AY Mail puts the data from the first record into the Subscription1 and Expiration Date1 fields. However, when a new record with the same email address is found, the data are recorded into the Subscription2 and Expiration Date2 fields, and so on.

You can see that both Kate's subscriptions are now recorded in the combined record. The subscription to Parents is recorded in the Subscription1 and Expiration Date1 fields, and the subscription to Popular Science is recorded in the Subscription2 and Expiration Date2 fields. If Kate had a third subscription, it would fill the Subscription3 and Expiration Date3 fields.

6. Once you imported your data and created combined records, you can use any of the following methods to send emails:

You can use if macros to build the text of your message. Click here for instructions.

You can write a script (e.g. Java Script or VB Script) to generate the text of your message. Click here for instructions.

You can send multiple emails to the same email address. Click here for instructions.