[chad1975]

Hi everyone, I'm new here and this of course is my first post.

I run a website for a wholesale company that sells used cars to other dealers. We have had great success in sending our clients email "ads" describing whatever happens to be the latest and greatest offering or program we have. (We don't spam, our clients either elect to sign up to for our emails or they do not.)

Anyways, I've been making full use of MS Word 07 and Outlook 07 to send these emails out. (I do templates in Word which then communicates with Outlook and my contacts list and I basically click send and I'm done. Doesn't matter if I am emailing 1 person or 1000.)

Can Apple's Word program interact with Entourage in a like manner?

If not, does anyone have any experience with compatible programs that will duplicate my current functionality with the MS programs?

This is being asked because one of the owners just picked up a new Apple for his house and now he's thinking of getting a laptop for work as well. I am not familiar with Apple and I want to guide him in the right direction for our purposes.

Thanks in advance for any advice given.

[Chris H.]

Originally Posted by chad1975

Hi everyone, I'm new here and this of course is my first post.

I run a website for a wholesale company that sells used cars to other dealers. We have had great success in sending our clients email "ads" describing whatever happens to be the latest and greatest offering or program we have. (We don't spam, our clients either elect to sign up to for our emails or they do not.)

Anyways, I've been making full use of MS Word 07 and Outlook 07 to send these emails out. (I do templates in Word which then communicates with Outlook and my contacts list and I basically click send and I'm done. Doesn't matter if I am emailing 1 person or 1000.)

Can Apple's Word program interact with Entourage in a like manner?

If not, does anyone have any experience with compatible programs that will duplicate my current functionality with the MS programs?

This is being asked because one of the owners just picked up a new Apple for his house and now he's thinking of getting a laptop for work as well. I am not familiar with Apple and I want to guide him in the right direction for our purposes.

Thanks in advance for any advice given.

Apple's iWork word processor, called Pages, may work with Mail, which in some ways is like Outlook. I'm not totally familiar with either, (especially since Mail doesn't like Yahoo without being paid), and I'm running a slow Power Mac.

[chad1975]

After thinking about it I realize my post might not have been very clear. The function I am looking to duplicate with Apple programs is referred to as "Mail Merge" in MS Office.

Any ideas?

[clayneal]

While I have never used this feature I just checed their site and I believe OpenOffice will do the trick. You can find it here. OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

Oh and welcome.

Clay

[nabl]

There are quite a few ways you could do this. I’ve honestly never done this, but I’ll try my best to point you in the right direction.

1. If you want to continue using Microsoft Office (the newest version for Mac being 2008), it’s probably quite similar to how it works under Windows. Here is a tutorial on Microsoft’s Web site telling how to do it.

2. If you would like to try Apple’s alternative to Microsoft Office (iWork), it’s quite simple as well. Here’s a video from this podcast that explains how to do it. All you’ll need to do (presumably) is export the contacts from Outlook and transfer them over into Address Book.

3. As Clayneal mentioned above, you could also try OpenOffice.org (also available for Windows and many other platforms), although I was unable to find any Mac-specific tutorials, nor do I have much experience with it under OS X.

[technologist]

How to perform a simple data merge in Word 2008 for Mac