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Anyway to have clones of my Mail drafts
#33259 03/04/15 12:24 AM
Joined: Dec 2009
kevs Offline OP
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It's the weekend, and I've composed an email to go out for business next week. It's in the draft folder now.

I'd like to send 10 variations, same text, different people. Just cannot figure a way to clone this email, so I can insert the different names and have them all in draft form for the weekday.

Last edited by cyn; 03/04/15 10:02 AM. Reason: Topic moved from the "Mac OS X Applications" forum to the "Networking" forum.
Re: Anyway to have clones of my Mail drafts
kevs #33260 03/04/15 12:59 AM
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Copy and paste it into 10 different draft messages, add the appropriate email addresses to each draft then on Monday open each draft and hit send.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Anyway to have clones of my Mail drafts
joemikeb #33263 03/04/15 03:51 AM
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kevs Offline OP
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Thanks Joe. Here is where I am on this.
If you do a right click, copy to, navigate to draft it makes a copy. It's a bit cumbersome.

Someone said that a command C, command V does the trick, but I cannot get that to work. any ideas?

Also, The copies stack on top of each other. So I cannot see or adjust them individually, I need to send out the one on top first. The the next, Super weird.

Finally, Apple Mail has a bugg, (confirmed by Michael at Spam Sieve a few weeks after I got on board Mail from Outlook) — it holds email in draft that were actually sent, cluttering the draft folder up with email which were successfully sent! (this does not have anything to do with my thread, but I had to mention it as it's frustrating - have you noticed that?)

Re: Anyway to have clones of my Mail drafts
kevs #33264 03/04/15 06:50 AM
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If you're sending the exact same e-mail to multiple people, you can do this:
  1. In Address Book, create a new Group, and drag into it the addresses of your 10 recipients.
  2. Address the draft to yourself, and drag the newly created Group into its Bcc bar.
  3. Hit "Send".
  4. Voila! The e-mail gets sent to you and your recipients, but only you see all the addresses.
  5. You can delete the Group afterwards if you no longer need it.
OR... Do you need to edit each e-mail individually before hitting "Send"?

Last edited by artie505; 03/04/15 06:55 AM. Reason: Add step & Cleanup

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Anyway to have clones of my Mail drafts
artie505 #33273 03/04/15 03:31 PM
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It sounds like he wants to insert maybe the recipient's name into each email.

The general term for this process is a "mail-merge". Which allows you to source a user list or database, and combine it with a message template, and send it as an email. The template makes substitution adjustments (such as changing "Dear {FIRST_NAME}," to "Dear John," or "Dear Judy,", or "Your new balance is ${ACCT_BALANCE}" to "Your new balance is $832.66" etc, so each recipient gets a customized message.

I don't know offhand of any good mail merge programs for the mac.


I work for the Department of Redundancy Department
Re: Anyway to have clones of my Mail drafts
Virtual1 #33275 03/04/15 03:34 PM
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Originally Posted By: V1
It sounds like he wants to insert maybe the recipient's name into each email.

That's precisely why I asked...because all he's given us to work with so far is "sounds likes".


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Anyway to have clones of my Mail drafts
artie505 #33280 03/04/15 04:07 PM
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kevs Offline OP
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Thanks guys, everyone is off base. I have Max Bulk Mail for that.

I have not done to well doing email blast so this is what I'm doing:

I create one great letter, and then I tweak that letter for each person. I change it to taste, email, company, but also, little things too.

So I want one email in draft folder, clone that 10 times. And they would show up separately and work on them individually.

I've discovered how to do this, but it's laborious, and they stack on top of each other, hence I cannot prepare or work on them individually (because I cannot access them, they are buried), until the day I send them all.

Re: Anyway to have clones of my Mail drafts
kevs #33282 03/04/15 04:20 PM
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Why can't you do that by creating 10 new e-mails, using copy & paste to "clone" your original to them, then saving them, as you create them, to your drafts folder?

If they're all on your desktop, sure, they'll be buried, but if you access them from your drafts folder you can see them individually.

(I've got no recollection of having run across any software that does what you're looking for.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Anyway to have clones of my Mail drafts
Virtual1 #33287 03/04/15 04:58 PM
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Originally Posted By: Virtual1

I don't know offhand of any good mail merge programs for the mac.


While "kevs" may not need it, for general future reference check out Serial Mailer. It allows for smart field inserts that can change with each duplicate e-mail, customized to a particular recipient.

And I second the suggestion of cut and paste and save 10 copies in the Drafts folder of Apple Mail. Each draft is visually and physically distinct from all the others.

One last comment: I have seen sent messages still saved in Drafts, even though they have been sent. It was not a consistent issue in the past and does not seem to have popped up with the latest version of OS 10.10.


On a Mac since 1984.
Currently: 24" M1 iMac, M2 Pro Mac mini with 27" BenQ monitor, M2 Macbook Air, MacOS 14.x; iPhones, iPods (yes, still) and iPads.

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