Using LibreOffice 5 To Email Out Personalised
Emails
LibreOffice if the free version of Microsoft Office. It’s good but not as good as Office, it’s always a step or two
behind MS Office’s functionality and slickness but when it comes to mail merge it works equally if not better
than MS Office as it doesn’t require the use of MS Outlook to send the email, it has its own built in email
sending program, that’s all Outlook is used for, to send the email, nothing more but it requires a lot more
configuring.
Requirements.
1. The data that is used in the merge needs to be in either LibreOffice Calc or LibreOffice Base. Calc is
the equivalent of MS Excel, Base is the equivalent of MS Access. Calc will read Excel files and Base
will read Access files. If your data is in a MS format, load it into Calc or Base and ‘Save As’ the Calc
or Base native format. For Calc this will be ‘ODF Spreadsheet *.ods’. For Base it will be ‘ODF
Database *.odb’.
Technical Requirements.
1. By default McAfee VirusScan blocks email being send from LibreOffice. Within Maths this should be
allowed as McAfee VirusScan is centrally managed and LibreOffice is allowed through and not
classed as a threat. If McAfee isn’t managed then the following needs to be changed:
a. As a user with admin rights, open McAfee Console.
b. Open the properties of Access Protection.
c. Select ‘Anti-virus Standard Protection’.
d. From the list of rules that appear on the right of the window, select ‘Prevent mass mailing
worms from sending mail’. Once selected, press the Edit button.
e. Add the text ‘, soffice.bin’ the end of the list of ‘Processes to excluded’. Press the OK button.
f. Press the OK button to close the Properties box and close the Console window.
2. With LibreOffice Writer, the email server address needs to be configured. This is in Tools -> Options -
> LibreOffice Writer -> Mail Merge E-mail. The minimum settings are (change to your name and
CRSid):
a. Your name e.g. = ‘Fred Blogs’
b. E-mail address e.g. = fb999@cam.ac.uk
c. Server name (enter the name exactly as shown to the right) = ppsw.cam.ac.uk
d. Port (enter the number exactly as shown to the right) = 25
You can try testing the settings if you wish.
So, let’s run through an example of a mail merge to email
I’m going to send out two emails, one to cm214@cam.ac.uk, the second to c.mortimer@damtp.cam.ac.uk.
The emails are very simply, they’re going to have the same subject line but the body will be personalised
using data from the data source. If will contain a friendly name and a date. All of these pieces of data, the
friendly name, the date and the email address will be in a spreadsheet, I’ll use LibreOffice Writer – MS Word
equivalent, to write and send the email.
Below is what’s in the spreadsheet – in LibreOffice Calc. Note how the columns have been given
titles, this is important!