Mail Merge and HTML?

[billpress]

Greetings,

 

I just bought FileMaker 8.5 Pro expecting to be able to send HTML newsletters to my mailing list using Mail Merge.

 

Unfortunately, it seems I can only send text messages. Is there a way to send HTML messages to my list?

 

If I cannot do it through FileMaker 8.5 Pro alone, I'd appreciate hearing workarounds (including using third-party software, if necessary).

 

I'm using a Mac with OS X (10.3.9).

 

Thanks,

Bill

[AHunter3]

There may be plug-ins that will let you generate HTML email, but email is an actual electronic format and that format doesn't natively include markup language. HTML email is a grafted hybrid that not all email clients support on the receiving end (let alone the sending end). FileMaker mostly uses low-level communications standards for passing instructions to email programs, and since HTML isn't part of those common standards, FileMaker doesn't natively support HTML email.

 

ALSO: if it's for a mailing list and your listmembers are expecting and anticipating your (HTML) emails, that's one thing, but in general HTML email is a bad idea: in addition to some email clients being incompatible with it, many others do it but don't do it well (the software authors may not update their rendering engine as often as they would for a real web browser), many users have HTML rendering turned off (because spammers use a HTML-email trick to flag live active email accounts and because rendering HTML from unknown/unfamiliar sources is a security risk and because most of it is unsolicted advertisements and is a bloody nuisance with blink tags and whatnot); others, like me for instance, actually have spam filters set up to trash any HTML email so they (we) would never even see it come in.