Yet Another Mail Merge

Initial Setup (just do this once)

If you have not yet done so, you’ll need to install the Mail Merge add-on at tinyurl.com/MMaddon, making sure you are logged in with your aguafria.org address. Fill out all of the required information, and you don’t need to connect it with your gmail contacts. There’s really nothing you can screw up at this step, don’t stress.

Next, create your own Google Spreadsheet and name it/place it in such a way you can find it again. I will call this “your spreadsheet.”

At this point, your Google Spreadsheet should look something like this:

Edits and Additions

At this point you may notice that some data is blank (because there was no info in Synergy) or formatted weird (suffixes like Sr. get included with the name), or you may wish for something extra to be a part of this dataset. I chose to filter the data to include any listed guardian the student lives with and who also has an email address. You can edit any cell you wish. Contact students to get updated info, or add another column with new info. One thing you may want to do is add a "Comments" column where you can type a unique comment about each student.

If there is a significant edit you think would benefit all teachers (like including a column for the phone number we have on file) please email me and I can look into it!

Drafting The Email

Back in your Agua Fria email account, open a new draft. I like to start out by writing an email about a specific student and then generalizing it later. Key Point: every time you reference data that will be unique to every student, you need to insert the correct Column Header (that's row 1) surrounded by double curly braces. For example, {{Student First}}’s Current Grade in Calculus would be a great Subject for an email. After drafting your email, you should have something that looks like the image here: