How to Email Unique File Attachments using Mail Merge for Gmail

Mail Merge, available for Gmail and Google Inbox, is a perfect tool for sending personalized emails to one or more email addresses using a simple Google Sheet. If you never performed merge before, please watch the Mail Merge tutorial and documentation to get started.

One of the most popular features of Mail Merge is its unique ability to send different file attachments to different email address. For instance, if you are applying for a job at different companies, you can attach the same PDF resume in all email messages but the cover letter could be different with each application.

This step-by-step tutorial explains how you can you can use Mail Merge for Gmail to send unique email attachments to your contacts. Mail Merge pulls files from Google Drive and includes them as attachments in the outgoing email messages.

Step 1: Install the Mail Merge add-on.

Step 2: Open a new Google Sheet, go to Addons > Mail Merge with Attachments > Create Merge template to initialize the sheet.

Step 3: Add one or more rows in the Mail Merge sheet. To keep things simple, you can add the First Name, last Name, and the Email address as shown in the screenshot.

Attach Google Drive files to Mail Merge

Step 4:  Go to Addons > Mail Merge > Add File Attachments > Insert Files from Google Drive and select one or more files that you wish to send with your email message. You can also select the option Select Files from Computer if the files are on the computer.

Mail Merge will get the direct link of the selected file(s) and inserts them into the File Attachments column. If you wish to send more files with the same email message, you can add the drive links in the same cell, separated by the comma.

Easily Add File Attachments with Mail Merge

In the previous step, we used the Google File Picker to select the files from Google Drive. This is slightly tedious more so as you have to repeat the steps for every row in your Mail merge sheet.

There’s an easier way though for adding attachments to merge. Instead of using the File Picker, you can simply put the name of the file in the File Attachments column. The addon, at the time of sending the email, will search your Drive for that file and attach it to the email message.

If you have multiple files in Google Drive with the same name, you can specify the folder path where the file is located. The syntax is \\Folder A\\Folder B\\filename.ext

I want to show you one more technique for quickly attaching files to your Mail mere sheet. Go to Addons > Mail Merge > Add File Attachments > List Files in Google Drive Folder. Now select the parent folder in your Google Drive and the addon will generate a list of every file it found inside that folder, including sub-folders.

Now switch back to the Mail Merge sheet and you’ll notice that a drop-down has been added to every cell in the File Attachments column. This makes it even easier for you to select files from Drive.

So we are all set. Go to the mail merge menu, choose Configure and run merge (video) to send your emails that all have unique attachments. You’ll find a copy of the emails in your Gmail Sent items.

For detailed instructions, please watch the video tutorial.

Gmail Blocks JavaScript Attachments

If you try to send a JavaScript attachment using Gmail or if you want to download a .js attachment, you'll get a new anti-virus warning: "Blocked for security reasons", "1 attachment contains a virus or blocked file. Downloading this attachment is disabled".

.JS has been added to the long list of file types that are blocked by Gmail for security reasons. The full list: .ADE, .ADP, .BAT, .CHM, .CMD, .COM, .CPL, .EXE, .HTA, .INS, .ISP, .JAR, .JS (NEW), .JSE, .LIB, .LNK, .MDE, .MSC, .MSI, .MSP, .MST, .NSH .PIF, .SCR, .SCT, .SHB, .SYS, .VB, .VBE, .VBS, .VXD, .WSC, .WSF, .WSH. "To prevent against potential viruses, Gmail doesn't allow you to attach certain types of files, including: certain file types (listed above), including their compressed form (like .gz or .bz2 files) or when found within archives (like .zip or .tgz files), documents with malicious macros, archives whose listed file content is password protected, archives whose content includes a password protected archive."

The GSuite Blog informs that "for inbound mail, senders will get a bounce message explaining why the email was blocked. If you still need to send .js files for legitimate reasons, you can use Google Drive, Google Cloud Storage, or other storage solutions to share or send your files."

You can still send JavaScript files using Gmail if you change the extension. What about downloading old .js attachments? Try the workarounds from this post.

See the Email Sender’s Company and Logo in your Gmail Inbox

The default layout of your Gmail inbox has the sender’s name listed in the left most column followed by the subject and the date of the message. The emails are sorted in reverse chronological order with the newest messages listed at the top.

The problem with this layout is that you cannot figure out who the actual sender of a message is without actually opening the email. For instance, if you get an email from Angus who works at Google and a second email from another Angus who is employed with Microsoft, Gmail will simply show Angus as the sender for both emails.

To solve this exact problem, I wrote Gmail Sender Icons and it is now available for everyone. It is a Google Chrome extension that will make it easy for you to identify the company or the organisation of the email sender right inside the message list of your Gmail inbox.

Check out the screenshots and you’ll get the idea.

The add-on extracts the email address of the sender, parses the website domain from the address and pulls the favicon image (often same as the logo) of the domain. It then appends the logo image and the company’s domain as a label to the message subject thus making it easy for you quickly identify the message sender.

It run entirely in your browser and not even a byte of your Gmail data is shared with anyone outside your browser. The Chrome extension internally uses the InboxSDK library to parse emails on the client’s side.

When your inbox is flooded with emails and you’d only like to focus your attention on messages that are from known senders, this Gmail extension will be a big help. It shows the sender label in default message views and search results.

You can also use Gmail Sender Icons to quickly identify emails from known domains in the spam folder than may have been mistakenly identified as spam by Gmail filters. Give it a shot.

Gmail Sender Icons