Automatic emails from Excel list

[JMJP]

Hi, I provide technical backing to my wife in managing a local amateur orchestra, and am using an Excel spreadsheet to manage the contacts list and tabs for each event, with a settings page to store email account details and file locations etc.  I have thus written macro code to allow an individual "mail merge"-type email to be sent programmatically to each player in communictions, with various options to generate the list.  This worked fine for quite a while, until recently my ISP blocked the email address, since somebody had reported an email as Spam, and they said it contravened their "acceptable use" policy.  So my question is - if I switch to BT, will there be any problem with this?  Or is there an alternative cheap/free way of doing it not linked to an ISP? I tried setting up a Gmail account, but it seems excessively complicated/impossible so gave up. Jon

[licquorice]

BT no longer supply email addresses to new customers so the question is academic. I wouldn't recommend BT as an email provider in any case.

No idea why you regard Gmail as complicated to set up.

[JMJP]

Thanks, I guess so, then.  I'm talking about opening a connection programmatically to a mail server to send data etc, when I tried this with Gmail it failed.  I then googled it and it talked about "trusted apps", I believe Excel can be configured to do this but not in the way I would like, so I gave up. Jon

[licquorice]

Trusted apps just means you use a specific password assigned to that app rather than the normal email password. Its quite straightforward. So excel will just login with its own password automatically once you have set it up.

[patricia_clark6]

I think you should try a dedicated email service like Sendinblue, MailerLite or Mailjet. They are free for small volumes. They are also designed for personalized mass messages without triggering spam filters.

[JMJP]

Thanks both - those sites would require using their portals, though, I imagine?  What I would want is the ability to use an "SMTP relay", as offered by Mailfence, but I would have to pay £45pa up front.

I tried the Gmail app password - that always returned an error 334 when trying to send an email.

I then downloaded and adapted some code for my VBA project to use Oauth2 via Gmail.  I got it to do all the authentication, save the token etc - but still, always the same error 334.  So stuck on that at the moment.