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FAQs for Edu-Mail administrators

Although it's tons of fun to send mail to large groups, the administrator does have some special responsibilities. It's our goal to post information here to help you handle Edu-mail efficiently.

Setting up your spreadsheet
We provide an excel spreadsheet that is formatted for the information we need to set up your school's contact list. The only fields that are required are student names, grades (groups), and email addresses. Leave the rest of the fields blank.

Please follow this format exactly or the listserv will not function. In particular, please proof teacher names so there are no spelling errors.

If a record has a misspelled teacher name, that record will be excluded from that class's group. Formatting your spreadsheet accurately will avoid many problems.

The spreadsheet of student names and emails must be updated each year. We'll provide a copy of your current list at the end of the school year, which can be used as a basis for the next year's list.

Designating Grades (Groups)
Every person listed on your spreadsheet will receive mail when you choose to send to "Entire Database." You also have the ability to send mail to up to four subgroups. Since Ed-Mail was written for educational institutions, the term "grade" is used.Schools usually want to send mail per grade. In the case of a recreational club, the groups may be swimmers, golfers, tennis team, etc.
Can a person belong to two groups?
The program is designed so each person can belong to the main group and one subgroup. If you want to link a person with more than one group, you enter two separate, identical entries for that person, but give them different group numbers.
For example:
Mary Smith, mjohnson@mailprovider.net / group 1
Mary Smith, mjohnson@mailprovider.net / group 2
Mary receives an email when you send mail to group 1 or group 2. Edu-Mail screens out duplicates, so when you send out to the entire mailing list, Mary will still receive only one email.

Please remember: It is very important to keep your data clean and correct. Funny characters like *&% in the email addresses will stop the list from working. Nothing can be in the email field except an email address, or the list will fail.

Troubleshooting
As the administrator, you will receive some "undeliverable" emails back when you send out emails. Out of a database of hundreds of contacts there will always be a few changed or dropped email addresses. Email addresses change much more frequently than phone numbers or street addresses.

The two most common types of errors are
1. Bad addresses. This will say something like "fatal error" or "mailbox does not exist." Remove the address from the list; if you wish, contact the receiver and ask for a new address.
2. Mailbox full. This means the receiver's mailbox is too full to accept the message. Not much you can do about this. Leave the email address on the list.

When you get a returned email, you can check whether the email address is functioning by sending a test email to that person from your personal email account. You may need to get a new address from the student or parent. Then you can login to your account and edit the record.

Formatting Messages
The options to format the body of the message (colors, bold and italic text, fonts) will be available if you are using a machine with an up-to-date version of Internet Explorer or Netscape. These options may not work if you are using an earlier version. Formatting options are also not supported by the Mozilla browser.

Your message may not look the same on every receiver's screen/computer, just as web pages can look different on different platforms. There are several reasons email messages vary in appearance. Users have the ability to set preferred fonts in their own individual email program. Also, users will be receiving your email either in plain text, HTML or complex HTML at their option.

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