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How to automate emails from Excel
You can send emails from an Excel sheet in three ways: Word mail merge, a Power Automate flow, or a custom automation. The right one depends on how often you send and whether the email needs information from another system.
Three ways to do it
Mail merge
Word reads the rows of your sheet and Outlook sends one email for each row. A person starts it each time. It fits a single send, such as a notice to a customer list.
Power Automate
A flow reads a table in an Excel file stored in OneDrive or SharePoint and sends an email for each row. It can run on a schedule. It fits a clean sheet and a simple email.
Custom automation
Software reads the sheet, checks each row, collects what the email needs from other systems, sends it and logs the result. It fits an email that depends on work done somewhere else.
Example: completed-job reports
For a Utah fiber contractor, a person entered job information on a website each day, then collected the completed jobs and sent them by email. We automated both parts as one process. The whole task had taken about one hour each working day.
What goes wrong
- A row is blank or malformed, and the email goes out with a gap in it.
- Nothing records that an email was sent, so it is sent twice.
- The file is open and locked on a computer, and the flow cannot read it.
- The sending account reaches its daily limit and the rest of the emails wait.
A sound automation checks each row first, marks each row as sent, and reports the rows it skipped.
Common questions
Can Excel send emails automatically?
Not by itself. Excel holds the data. Another tool does the sending: Outlook through mail merge or a macro, Power Automate, or a custom automation.
Can an email go out when a row changes?
Yes. A Power Automate flow or a custom automation can watch the sheet and send when a row is added or a status column changes. The sheet must be stored where the automation can read it.
Does this work with Google Sheets and Gmail?
Yes. The same three approaches exist there: a mail merge add-on, Apps Script, or a custom automation.
When should I hire someone?
Hire someone when the email depends on another system, when a wrong or duplicate email costs you money or trust, or when nobody on your team has time to keep a flow running.
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