Help Mail Merge only in Android

[IrvCantor]

I am searching for a way to do a mail merge while in Android, using Gmail and Excel (or Sheets), without any desktop involvement. There's an old app in the Play Store that no longer works. I thought a workflow app like Power Automate might work in combination with Gmail and Excel and I am investigating that. But I thought someone out there might have figured out a way to do this exclusively in Android without using a desktop at all. Thanks.

 

[puppykickr]

Can you add your Excell to your G-Mail?

 

[IrvCantor]

I'm sorry, but I don't know what you mean. They are separate apps on my tablet. What do you mean by "add"? Is there a way to have Gmail use the spreadsheet information to send multiple email messages? Thanks.

 

[puppykickr]

That I do not know.

But you can add accounts to your G-Mail.
That is what I thought you needed.

 

[ocnbrze]

I'm sorry, but I don't know what you mean. They are separate apps on my tablet. What do you mean by "add"? Is there a way to have Gmail use the spreadsheet information to send multiple email messages? Thanks.

can you explain more on what this is? i was thinking along the same lines as @puppykickr

 

[svim]

A typical mail merge project is a pretty user intensive task, i.e. someone has to selectively assign what text in a document goes to a specified place in something like a different document template. Seems like that's still more of a desktop/laptop kind of thing, or maybe a tablet, not so much a phone.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...nvelopes-f488ed5b-b849-4c11-9cff-932c49474705
What mobile device are you using? How complex are the files you'll be merging?

 

[IrvCantor]

Okay, let me explain. I have an email message that I want to send to 20 friends. The message is identical to all 20 people, except for the greeting "Dear (first name),". An easy way to do that is a mail merge. I "merge" the standard email message with data in a spreadsheet. There are two columns in the spreadsheet, one column containing the email address, and one column containing the person's first name. There are 20 rows in the spreadsheet for the 20 email messages I want to send. The email app and the spreadsheet app have to "talk" to each other - the email app takes the draft message, sees that it needs an email address and a first name and gets those pieces of information from the spreadsheet. The email program sees 20 rows in the spreadsheet, so it knows it has to send 20 emails. The email program takes the email address in the first column and puts it in the To: line, then takes the first name in the second column and inserts it into the text of the message after the word "Dear", and then it send the message. This procedure repeats for each line of the 20 lines in the spreadsheet. This whole activity takes a few seconds to complete. The desktop version of Google Sheets has "add ons" that enable it to interact with Gmail and do a mail merge. But I am an Android-only user, and am looking for a way to do this without using a desktop. There is a mail merge app in the App Store, but it no longer works. There are also workflow apps that allow you to define a process that involves separate apps working together. I haven't tried that yet. I am looking for someone who has successfully done a mail merge using only the Android environment.

 

[IrvCantor]

I am using a tablet, a Samsung Galaxy A7 Lite, 3 GB RAM, 32 GB storage.
I also have a phone which is probably more powerful,
a Xiaomi Poco x3 with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB storage.

 

[Unforgiven]

For me Google docs works pretty much the same on my phone as on my Chromebook (aside from not having the convenience of a keyboard and mouse on my phone) so I'm not sure doing a mailmerge in docs won't be pretty much the same on your phone.

https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/mail_merge_for_google_docs/799434348782

 

[IrvCantor]

I think Docs or Sheets in Chrome OS is not the same as Docs or Sheets in Android. The Android versions are much more limited. For example, there is a menu item for Add Ons in the Android versions, and you can list the available add ons, and there are just five or so add ons, none of which is a mail merge tool. The Chrome OS versions of the apps have tons of add ons, including the mail merge tool you referenced. I have just an individual Google account and am not familiar with "workplace" Google or if that makes a difference for this question.

 

[svim]

Is this 'Mail Merge' app from Appestry the app you're referring to?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appestry.mail_merge
If yes, in it's basic description section it does refer to a 2017 change that Google implemented:
"• UPDATE: Since June 2017, Google has blocked web view based OAuth, so Gmail OAuth isn't currently supported."
This might be part of the problem as to why it 'no longer works' for you. This or perhaps some other changes Google has been enabling recently to make Gmail more secure -- things like making 2-factor login a default now has pissed off some despite being a plus point for better privacy. Anyway, another thing to take into consideration is the content of your emails. Also in the basic description, the app only supports plain vanilla, HTML only messages:
- Plain text email
- HTML only email
- HTML email with plain text alternative
If your emails typically consist of a lot of added extras (emojis, embedded graphics, etc.) than it's no longer just text.


Of course if this isn't the app in question, ignore all of the above. It might help if you actually named the app.

 

[IrvCantor]

Yes, the Appestry app is the one I was referring to.
I just found this video describing how to do a mail merge exclusively in Android using a work flow app, Power Automate:

I haven't tried it yet, but so far that's the only solution that stays entirely within Android. I am still interested in other solutions that people might be using.