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Level 1

7 points

how can i paste a column of email addresses from an excel spreadsheet into a Mail message To: window

In the past I have been able to send a group email by copying a column of email addresses from an Excel spreadsheet and pasting it into the To: window of an email message I had composed. I simply dragged my cursor down the column containing the email addresses, right-clicked Copy, put my cursor into the To: window of the email, and hit Paste. Mail recognized the list as a series of email addresses and I was able to hit Send and the email went on its way.

Today I tried to do this and after I hit Send I got an error message. It appears to me that Mail did not recognize the list as a series of individual email addresses but saw them as one long address; the error message said it "did not appear to be a valid email address". Has something changed in Mail? I recently installed Mavericks!

I can't be the only one who sends group emails this way. Are others experiencing this problem?

Posted on Oct 31, 2013 9:51 AM

Best reply

Tony T1

Level 6

10,232 points

Posted on Oct 31, 2013 10:00 AM

Mail now needs a "," (comma) separator.

In Excel, just go the the next col and use the formula: =A1&","

...and then paste that col into mail

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39 replies

TPBall3

Level 1

0 points

Dec 2, 2014 3:05 PM in response to Michael J

Or move back to a PC... Seems like each update makes life harder to do business with a Mac. I guess their target audience is not the business community.

Jan 28, 2015 2:02 AM in response to bobgarv

I have another solution using Gmail's web interface. Pasting the column of data into Gmail's web interface recipient field works exactly as Apple Mail used to. Then now comma separated entries can be copied to Apple mail correctly.

Oct 14, 2015 12:41 AM in response to Tony T1

Thanks so much...searched for ages and yours was the only solution that worked.!

R1N53

Level 1

0 points

Feb 1, 2016 5:57 AM in response to bobgarv

Thanks!

Feb 2, 2016 7:23 AM in response to R1N53

Hello - the original post helped me (comma separator worked!) but I would now like to take that same list from excel - including the comma separators - and create a distribution list. Is this possible, and does anyone know how to do it? I cannot figure it out 😕

cam812

Level 1

6 points

Feb 2, 2016 8:19 AM in response to bobgarv

I would like to have a new group of email addresses by copying them from an email I get. The addresses show at the top of the email, but how can I make them into a list for the group in Mail Version 9.2 (3112)?

May 8, 2016 5:33 AM in response to bobgarv

I am running OSX El Capitan 10.11.4. I am trying to paste email addresses from Excel (Mac 2011 v14.6.3) into Mail. I tried the workaround solution mentioned here but it didn't work for me. However, a quick effective solution I have since found uses Notes. Copy the email addresses from Excel and paste into a new Note. Copy that and paste into the preferred email field - it just works! If any email don't show in a panel it is probably because there is a spelling error.

Jun 10, 2016 11:10 AM in response to markcopolodipsidolo

WOW! I've been working on copying about 200 email addresses from excel to an email for about 2 hours now - following all sorts of convoluted trails and having to take breaks in between. Your solution took me all of 30 seconds! Thank you so much.

jobowen

Level 1

9 points

Aug 25, 2016 2:55 PM in response to bobgarv

An easy and simple cut and paste has become a hard to remember work around. I had to leave Thunderbird for a lot of reasons but this could make me reconsider...

how can i paste a column of email addresses from an excel spreadsheet into a Mail message To: window