There are times I have to send mail to varying subsets of a list of people. I’ve been doing that with a Numbers spreadsheet. I copy the list to a new tab in Numbers where I use checkboxes to select the entries I want, then sort and delete rows to remove the unchecked lines. An export to CSV from Numbers gives me a mail merge file.
Today I discovered I can create an OmniOutliner file with extra columns for Greeting, Address, and any other fields I want to use in my mail merge.
View->Show Status Checkboxes lets me check the lines I want to use. Filter on checked. Export to CSV, which exports the current view. I get a perfect mail merge CSV of just the records I want.
The OO notes get in the way, so I use View->Hide All Notes before exporting.
An alternative to selecting on checkboxes would be to add a history column. Add today’s date to the rows you want, filter on the date, and hide the history column along with notes before export to CSV.
OO is fantastic. It will do things beyond the scope of just outlining without degrading how well it works for outlines.
Note to OmniGroup - please don’t forget about OmniOutliner. I’m eager to hear your plans for OO7, which I’m sure - right? - is already in the works.
