Tag Archives: Usability

How to send group emails from your iPhone

UPDATED: Now works with most email services and eliminates the Invalid Address dialog box. Thanks to commenter YF, Luke for the fix.

Ever wanted to send an email or photo to a pre-defined group of contacts on your iPhone? This trick will let you create unlimited email groups (or distribution lists).

It’s a good thing the iPhone now has cut-and-paste, as it makes this trick a lot easier to implement. Here’s hoping the iPhone engineers don’t take three more revisions to add group emailing.

This trick was inspired by a workaround I found for Gmail back when it didn’t allow us to create groups or distribution lists (See: Creating distribution lists in GMail).

To begin, go into the Notes app in your iPhone and type all the email addresses you wish to include in the group, separating each with a comma.

UPDATE: Use the following format when typing your e-mail addresses to avoid the Invalid Addresses dialog or AOL/Comcast mail server errors.

name1<email1>,name2<email2>,name3<email3>,namen<emailn>

Screenshots for article on using email groups in iPhone Mail

Alternatively, you can type this list in your computer, copy it into the body of an email and retrieve it in your iPhone. The reason we need to type the addresses and copy them is because you can’t type commas in the email field of the Contacts app.

Select all the addresses and copy them to the iPhone‘s clipboard:

Screenshots for article on using email groups in iPhone Mail

Go into the Contacts application and create a new contact for your distribution list. Type the group’s name into the contact’s Company field. Use something simple to type later on, such as GF for your family group or GW for your work group.

Screenshots for article on using email groups in iPhone Mail

Paste the addresses you copied before into the contact’s email field and, if you like, change the field’s label to a custom value like “group mail.”

Screenshots for article on using email groups in iPhone Mail

Go into your Mail app and create a new message. Type the group name in the To: field until it shows up in the list below, then select it:

Screenshots for article on using email groups in iPhone Mail

The group’s name will now show up in the To: field.

Screenshots for article on using email groups in iPhone Mail

Type your message and send it. The following dialog will pop up. Ignore it and hit Send once more:

UPDATE: With the updated instructions this dialog will not pop-up! Nor will you receive an error message from your ISP’s mail server.

Screenshots for article on using email groups in iPhone Mail

Presto! Instant distribution lists on your iPhone. The beauty of this trick is that it works anywhere you use the Mail app… so you can now send multiple photos to multiple contacts at once.

Seriously, who runs Microsoft’s Usability Lab?

Check out the Preferences Pane for the four Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage). They all look different and behave differently.

Shouldn’t programs in the same office suite at least look alike?

While setting up the latest Microsoft Office suite on a friend’s Mac, I needed to set all applications to save to Office’s previous file format by default – for better compatibility with clients who might not have upgraded to Redmond’s latest.

Check out these images of the Preferences pane for each Office app and where the file format compatibility settings are stored:

Microsoft Word:

In Microsoft Word, the Preferences Pane looks a lot like Apple’s System Preferences Pane and you select the default format you want to save files to on the “Save” tab under the “Output and Sharing” section. Looking good so far.

The Microsoft Word Preferences Pane
scaled.WordPrefs.png

Microsoft Word Preferences : Output and Sharing : Save Pane
scaled.WordPrefSave.png

Microsoft Excel:

Excel’s Preferences Pane also look a lot like Apple’s System Preferences, but now the “Save” tab rests within the “Sharing and Privacy” section. Worst of all, you select the default format you want to save files to on the “Compatibility” tab. Word also has a “Compatibility” tab, but it does different stuff.

The Microsoft Excel Preferences Pane
scaled.ExcelPrefs.png

Microsoft Excel Preferences : Sharing and Privacy : Compatibility Pane
scaled.ExcelPrefCompatibility.png

Microsoft PowerPoint:

Powerpoint has a completely different Preferences Pane, with all tabs displayed at the top like a toolbar. It also has a “Compatibility” tab, but you select the default file save format on the “Save” tab.

Microsoft PowerPoint Preferences : Save Pane
scaled.PowerpointPreferences.png

Microsoft Entourage:

Entourage is so different from the rest of the Office suite that it doesn’t surprise me to see a totally different Preferences Pane. There’s no need to set compatibility options here, but take a look at it anyway.

The Microsoft Entourage Preferences Pane
scaled.EntouragePrefs.png

For comparison, here’s Apple’s iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote):

The Apple Pages Preferences Pane
scaled.PagesPrefs.png

The Apple Numbers Preferences Pane:
scaled.NumbersPrefs.png

The Apple Keynote Preferences Pane
scaled.KeynotePrefs.png

They could still look better, and more like Apple’s OSX System Preferences Pane, but at least they all look alike.