The Wonderful Thing About Mail Merge

So I'm not a big fan of Microsoft Outlook. For some reason I've always found it annoying and I hate how it HAS TO BE THE DEFAULT EMAIL PROGRAM ON WINDOWS EVEN THOUGH YOU'VE OBVIOUSLY UNSELECTED THAT OPTION. Don't get me wrong, I like many aspects of Windows. For example, the DELETE button is something that gives me great sadness every time I use a Mac. But for some reason Outlook sucks. Anyway, I have discovered myself slightly wrong because it seems like Outlook (or rather Outlook+Word+Excel) may have ONE redeeming quality: Mail Merging.

So what is mail merging you ask? Imagine having 200+ professors that you want to personally email to invite to an event of yours, like the Dining Etiquette Workshop. And you obviously don't want to start out "Dear Professor" because then they'd just write you off as another one of those "generic email writers." What can you do? Mail Merge lets you write and format an email invitation in Microsoft Word, personalize that email to a specific professor that you've listed in Microsoft Excel, and it emails your invitation to every email on that Excel Document through Outlook! Ingenious I know. So you're like "So What? I don't really think professors care that much about having a personalized email, what's the point?" Well imagine having a gazillion industry representatives and recruiters and officials whom you want to email to come to DECaF. Yes, let's just put ALL their emails in one "TO:" box and send it out. Yaknowadimean?

Anyway, Mail Merge has been a life saver in sending out Professor Confirmations, Student Reminders, etc and etc. http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/send_personally/ You should all try it out. Mail merge your friends! It'll seem like you're writing a personal and happy email, they'll never know =P

PS--Career Services is hosting a Resume Writing Workshop for Engineers. Very important for ya'll out there looking for an internship or summer research position. Especially important since its catered for engineers. I mean it is Engineers Week that's coming up, right?