First, when something stumps you, you can send email to Support for a personal response which can usually help solve your problem. Sending email to support can expedite resolution of your issue.
Most problems that users have are related to setting up their mail server settings, so please see the topic Server Setup Trouble below for more help with this.
When you launch the first time you are asked if you want to allow Mailings access to Contacts. You must answer YES because the Mailings user interface is dependent on this accessibilty. If you answer no, Mailings will quit. (Historically Mailings was designed for access to "Address Book", now known as Contacts.)
To manually allow access to Contacts do the following:
1) Select System Preferences from the Apple menu.
2) Go to the "Security & Privacy" pane.
3) Click the "Privacy" tab.
4) Select "Contacts" on the left hand side.
5) In the list that displays on the right select to allow Mailings to access your contacts.
The most common problem that users have is configuring Mailings so that it can communicate with the mail server. The best approach here is to either consult the administrator of the mail server or copy the settings from your regular email client. You can also check out Server Settings for more help configuring the mail server.
Some tips:
Don't use SSL (secure connections) if your mail server does not support it, it may inhibit the program from connecting. Note that the secure connections option is on by default. (If you check the Mailings log, accessible from the File menu, you may see server response mesages like: "Message not sent: 500 5.5.2 unrecognized command" which may indicate that the mail server doesn't understand SSL commands.)
Although Mailings provides a popup menu with the most common ports, namely 25, 587 and 465, your port may be different. If it is, use the port text box, adjacent to this popup menu, to enter the port.
When testing, if you find you are not receiving the test email, be sure to check your "junk mail folder," especially if you are testing with an HTML message. Your mail message may have been filtered as spam by your email client.
You may be required to set the sender ("From Name"), in the Mailer window, to the name and email address associated with the mail server's account. This applies to MobileMe accounts.
Check that the mail server name, the user name or password are not mispelled. For example, one user typed "stmp.me.com" as the mail server, but it is "smtp.me.com" for MobileMe.
When choosing an authentication method, "Automatic" is probably the best choice.
Check that you are not exceeding your email send limit imposed by the mail server. For more information about this topic see the Decide article on this website.
In the "From Name" field of the Manual pane of the Mailer, only use valid characters; for example don't use punctuation like a comma. One user entered their name, followed by a comma and their company name in the "From Name" field of the Mailer window. And that caused the mail server to reject the connection.
Mailings reports error messages received by the mail server in the status field of the Mailer window during Preview, and in the "Error?" column of the Progress window during an actual mailing. Be sure to check the code and content of the error message. If you send email for support, be sure to include this information.
Read more below about "verbose console logging" for help with problems with the mail server.
Nobody likes to read documentation. But Mailings has extensive documentation, including examples of how you can use the program. All documentation is available directly and conveniently from the Help menu. A lot of effort went into creating the help files, and they contain quite a bit of information about the program.
The table of contents has links to all the help files listed in the Help menu.
For example, two topics all users should consult is Mailings Quick Start and Creating Mailings, both of which are a "hands on" exploration of the program's features. They take you through the process of setting up Mailings and sending messages, step by step.
Most of the controls in every window have what are called "tool tips" or "help tags" which appear under the mouse when you hover it over a user interface item. It provides information on that item without the need to consult documentation. Moreover, every window has a help button (round button with a ? in it) that takes you to the part of the documentation relevant for that window.
To aid in tracking down problems when communicating with mail servers Mailings includes a feature called "Verbose console logging." On the "Logs" tab of the Preferences window is an option named "Verbose console logging."
When you select this checkbox Mailings will log a copy of every command sent to the mail server, as well as the responses received. This is useful when trying to determine where a session with a mail server is going bad. After you turn on verbose logging send your mail again. Then select "Mailings Log..." in the File menu to open up the Console app to view the log.
If you are having trouble sending a web page created with iWeb on your website, you can use use the "eml" file support to do so as described here to get better results. Also take a look at this document for an example with Mail Stationery, the process is very similar to iWeb: Using Mail Stationery.
This method uses Safari to interpret the iWeb pages for use in Mailings. Please follow these steps:
1) Open the iWeb web page in Safari.
2) Select "Mail Contents of This Page" in Safari's "File" menu. This will create a mail message with the new HTML source in its body, so it should display fine in your mail client.
3) If the draft looks good, send the message created by Safari to yourself. When you receive it, save it to disk as "raw source," which will have an extension of "eml." You can do this in Mail by selecting the message in the Message viewer, and then choosing the the menu item :
View > Message > Raw Source
A dialog will display. Select a format "Raw Message Source" as shown:
Remember where you save the "eml" file.
4) Drag the "eml" file into the "Web Page or File" text field in a Mailings Mailer window, or use the "Browse for Files" button.
5) That's it - now you just need to set a subject, and address the message in the Mailer window as usual. Then send it. (You can use "Preview" first to check that the message looks good.)
Using Template Tags in iWeb Pages
To inlcude a template tag in an iWeb page simply include it in the text of the iWeb page, like any other text. This is the same procedure used when you want to use template tags in Apple Mail Stationary. Take a look at this document for an example with Mail Stationery, the process is very similar to iWeb: Using Mail Stationery.
Using Attachments with iWeb Pages
If you want to attach files to a message made with iWeb using the eml approach above, you need to add the attachments in Mail before you create the eml file. Attachments can't be added in Mailings when you send eml files in Mailings. In other words the eml file should contain the attachment.
Dealing With Error 33 (top)
Error 33 is currently the "catch all" error number sent by the secure mailer (SSL.) In an update, the specific error messages will be sent to the Mailer window, but for now you need to check the console logs.
To see the explicit error message associated with error 33 select "Mailings Log" from the Mailings File menu:
This opens the Console app, and displays the Mailings log file. Some errors are logged here, but you will also want to check the general console log by selecting "Console Messages" from the list on the left hand side of the Console window:
All messages from Mailings will look something like this, which you can filter out using the search field as shown:
You can possibly avoid error 33 if SSL is not required by your mail server, and it may not even be supported by your mail server. Try turning it off in Server Settings as shown:
