Software for Mailing individualized letters

[inkking]

I am wondering what program I would need to send letters to multi individualized letters? i.e. Dear Mr Smith, Then dear Mr Jones.
I was thinking about printing them and mailing in an envelope, USPS

 

[pm-r]

I am wondering what program I would need to send letters to multi individualized letters?

You might want to check with your ISP, and also if they even allow such programs and what is involved so they don't label you as a spammer and ban you from posting.

Some even have a maximum of e-mails allowed per day.

But as to your question, I would try googling the Internet and I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of script or automator available for your email client application.

Maybe try this based on your question:
send letters to multi individualized - Google Search

Some of the hits show various alternatives.



- Patrick
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[usagora]

You might want to check with your ISP, and also if they even allow such programs and what is involved so they don't label you as a spammer and ban you from posting.

Some even have a maximum of e-mails allowed per day.

I see the OP has an edit, so maybe it said something different before you posted, but he says he wants to mail physical letters, not email.

inkking, do you have Microsoft Office?
Use mail merge for bulk email, letters, labels, and envelopes - Office Support

 

[pm-r]

I see the OP has an edit, so maybe it said something different before you posted,

Thanks Jonathan, even though his edit post time is later than mine, I don't recall seeing that bit of info.

Isn't what he is wanting to do referred to as mail merge in such compatible applications??? Maybe even Pages.

And then of course a specialized and organized contacts list.

Have a look at Pages Help topics and menus, and I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't something helpful there.


EDIT:
Years and older Pages suggestion:

HOW-TO
How to create mail merge documents with Pages and Numbers
How to create mail merge documents with Pages and Numbers | Macworld

And some more modern hits available here:
mac pages mail merge - Google Search




- Patrick
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[pm-r]

Good grief...!!!

I did a bit of Googling and find that Apple has been Sscrewing things up and disabling Application features for longer that I thought:

For example:
Feb 25, 2019 6:35 PM in response to Pepperonidog

There was Mail Merge in Pages '09 but Team Apple seems hellbent on making it's customer's lives as hard and miserable as possible.

Is there a mail merge feature in Pages an… - Apple Community

You should have also reviewed the menu structure, and the Help panel to arrive at the conclusion that other than Pages '09 v4.3, there is no built-in Mail Merge in subsequent releases of Pages, including v8.2. Six years without Mail merge. One could infer a message from Apple in that lapse.

2019 Mail Merge for Pages - Apple Community

Sad... Why does Apple do this sort of thing??? Gads, even AppleWorks had the feature and it was also easy to use.

So it looks like workarounds maybe, Or give Microsoft Word a tryIf you have it.

I think MS at least keeps the good useful features in their application software




- Patrick
======

 

[chscag]

Lots of folks have complained about the move from Pages 09 to the now free versions of Pages that many features have been removed. Unfortunately, Mail-Merge was one of them.

Apple has brought back many of the missing features in their latest version of Pages, but again, some of those new features are limited only to users running Mojave or later.

What some folks do not realize is that it's possible to keep both versions of Pages at the same time. So if you have Pages 09, don't remove it after installing a newer version.

 

[usagora]

Sad... Why does Apple do this sort of thing???

Would sure be nice if they'd provide some sort of changelog explaining why they remove features.

 

[pm-r]

Apple has brought back many of the missing features in their latest version of Pages, but again, some of those new features are limited only to users running Mojave or later.

Thanks Charlie, and certainly not your fault, but that sure is not much help to those of us who can only go to High Sierra as the latest OS.

What some folks do not realize is that it's possible to keep both versions of Pages at the same time. So if you have Pages 09, don't remove it after installing a newer version.

Likewise, there are still some of us who can boot up into our Snow Leopard partition and use our AppleWorks.

I wonder why Apple keeps using the "New and Improved" with their various OS versions, especially when they drop so many features???

How long has it taken them to get Pages up to an actual useful workable application??? Gheese... Let me count the years....





- Patrick
======

 

[chscag]

How long has it taken them to get Pages up to an actual useful workable application???

It's been more than 5 years at least. The latest version of Pages (10.0) is actually very nice and of course integrates well with macOS. But there are still some features that are missing that were in the older iWork Pages 09.

I don't use things like Mail Merge but I also subscribe to MS 365 which includes Word, PPT, and Excel. The reason I keep Word is because of backward compatibility with all the older documents that I have and still use. No other WP program can display them correctly except Word.

By the way, you can still find iWork Pages 09 to download if you look hard enough. It's not the full licensed copy but a legal trial version. However, the trial never expires.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Would sure be nice if they'd provide some sort of changelog explaining why they remove features.

I can tell you why lots of features were removed from the iWork apps.

With the rise in popularity of the iPad, Apple worked furiously to re-write the Macintosh version of the iWork apps so that files were binary-compatible between iOS and Mac OS versions. They got out the compatible version for the Macintosh surprisingly quickly, but to do this they had to leave out a lot of features for future inclusion.

Apple has been adding features back in to their iWork products all along since. They haven't been ignoring them. However, if you expect Apple's iWork products to become high-end products again, legitimately competing with Microsoft Office, especially Pages, you aren't going to see that happen. A number of years back Apple pulled back from most of their high-end products. They realized that their software mostly only existed to sell their hardware. They also realized that most of those products should be targeted towards average users, not power users. In that transition, the iWork products became entirely free. Any high-end software products that couldn't support themselves were jettisoned, those that could were spun off and they became even more high-end. (Note that Filemaker Pro and FinalCut Pro are only used by serious professionals now, and that Apple doesn't even advertise them in association with the Macintosh anymore.)

You can expect the iWork products to continue to be improved incrementally, but they will never again be a truly high-end product. That's not what Apple needs them to be. Apple's iWork apps are low to mid-range products with nominal compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats. That's what the majority of Mac users needed/wanted.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

If you are talking about snail mail (USPS), then what you need is a product that does "mail merge".

Mail merge - Wikipedia

The most well known product for that on the Macintosh is Microsoft Word. MS Word can do a very sophisticated mail merge.

How to Use Mail Merge in Microsoft Word 2016 for Mac

You can do a mail merge with LibreOffice (free)

Home | LibreOffice - Free Office Suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft

but it isn't as easy to use for this as MS Office:

How to Use Mail Merge on LibreOffice Writer – Better Tech Tips

If you want to send out personalized *e-mails* to a large list of contacts, doing a simple mail merge is easy and free with:

Moopato Bulk Mailer (free)
Moopato Bulk Mailer | Moopato eBook Writer

 

[MacInWin]

Randy, this is spot on:

A number of years back Apple pulled back from most of their high-end products. They realized that their software mostly only existed to sell their hardware.

What too many folks who complain about Apple software don't realize is that Apple is, at the base, a hardware company. They give away the OS, give away the Works suite, just to make the hardware reasonably attractive. MicroSoft is, at base, a software company who sells an OS, sells an office suite, but who manufacture a small niche of hardware on the side (tablets) to sell more of the software.

So Apple, by moving to all ARM CPUs in all devices, is going to merge the OS for all so that that environment of hardware is more attractive. Imagine the unification of Mac and iDevices to the point where a task can be launched on an  Watch, seamlessly moved to an iPad, then finalized on a Mac and send back down to the  Watch and iDevice, all with no real change in functionality other than the input mechanism (keys, taps) and the size of the output. Apple is coming close to that with their various health offerings. I can wear my Watch while I work out, record the workout, along with heart rates, distances, effort, then with zero interaction on my part, that same data is available on my iDevice (iPhone and iPad) in the health app. The next step is to have that exact same app run on my Mac so that it, too, gets the inputs from my Watch. Now think about that link in security applications. I already unlock my MBP with my Watch, authorize software installations with a double click on the Watch, and pay for items with Apple Pay or cards in my Wallet with taps on the Watch. Integration is coming, and will arrive much sooner with all ARM devices in the stable.

What that integration means is that if you buy any one of those devices, the other will immediately be more attractive to you, hence Apple sells more hardware and maybe more services to support that hardware.