After Working Out the Kink’s, AutoHotkey Sends Individual E-Mails Smoothly

The scourge of the Internet, Spam haunts our daily lives—whether in the form of phishing e-mails or unwanted phone calls. While never eliminated, we minimized its impact through filtering and blocking. As a side effect of our efforts, we now commonly check our Spam folder when searching for an errant missive. Due to this problem e-mail providers now add layers of protection to their servers—usually in the form of what content we can transmit, message size, and the number of e-mails sent in a specific period of time.

Generally, we never think about these limitations because our local e-mail program restricts us enough to prevent our abusing the system. This confines us safely within the parameters of our e-mail provider. Only setting up our own e-mail server removes these restrictions.

It is important to understand that sending a mass email through your Gmail does have some limits (a total of more than 500 recipients in a single email and or more than 500 emails sent in a day). There is a maximum of email recipients a user can have in one single email, as well as a maximum amount of emails a user can send in 24 hours. It will not work by sending them at 11:50 pm and again at 12:05 am; the system requires a full 24 hours to pass.

How to Send Mass Email in Gmail – Few Easy Options

Years ago, I ran an e-mail server sending thousands of ComputorEdge e-mail subscriptions every week. Since I controlled the software setup, I also controlled the rules. (I did not use it for Spam, but I could have.) Even then, I found that I needed to meter my mailing. If I loaded the new messages too fast, some would get lost. (Probably a buffering problem.) In any case, unless you have a particular need, I don’t recommend setting up your own e-mail server. If you need to manage large mailing lists, I have no doubt that many services now provide mass e-mail capabilities for a price.

If you only need a minimal e-mail sending capability, you can avoid either setting up a server or purchasing a service by sending e-mail with AutoHotkey. (I test my AutoHotkey script daily by feeding my spouse her daily horoscope at 6am every morning.) Below I list a few blogs on the topic “How to E-Mail with AutoHotkey.”

If you happen to own a longer mailing list, understand that you will still need to set up metering in AutoHotkey to prevent hitting the limits set by your e-mail provider. You may need to spread out your transmissions by either implementing the SetTimer command or adding the AutoHotkey app to the Windows scheduler—thereby restricting the number of script-generated e-mails. However, if you plan to send more than 500 messages a day, then I suggest you investigate mass e-mail services.

New “AutoHotkey Topics and Series” Menu Item

While not a long list, I provide links to my how-to-send e-mail with AutoHotkey blogs, in the “Send E-Mail Using AutoHotkey” page linked in the “AutoHotkey Topics and Series” Menu appearing at the top right of this page, as well as, just below in this blog. This should help an AutoHotkey user get started writing a script for generating single e-mails. A creative user could combined these techniques with a Graphical User Interface (GUI command) and build their own user-friendly e-mail transmission platform. (I might take on a quick-and-dirty version of a user-friendly AutoHotkey SendMail.ahk script as a future project.)

The following blogs from the linked page demonstrate how to write an AutoHotkey script that sends an e-mail while bypassing your default e-mail program.

How to Send E-mail Directly from an AutoHotkey Script May 10, 2019

Using Windows CDO COM, You Can Send E-mail Without Opening Your E-mail Program

As part of the Component Object Model (COM), Microsoft offers a system called Collaboration Data Objects (CDO)—making it possible to create and mail a message by sending a string of data directly to an e-mail server without any intervening e-mail software. By using this technique, we can write an AutoHotkey e-mail-sending script without using a client program normally associated with e-mail—whether desktop or Web-based.

E-mail the Daily Horoscope to Yourself (AutoHotkey Trick) May 17, 2019

Combining the Daily Horoscope from the Web with this AutoHotkey E-mail Sending Technique Makes It Possible to Deliver the Heavenly Advice to Anyone

E-mail—the oldest and most universal method for reaching people—offers a major advantage over text messages and other digital forms of communications (e.g. Twitter, Facebook). Most people own at least one e-mail address which they can access from any of their computers (PC, Mac, or Linux), any smartphone (iPhone or Android), or tablet. To send an e-mail, you don’t need to know a phone number or the type of device. E-mail servers push the message directly to the target addressee. Plus, using AutoHotkey, you can automate the periodic sending of an e-mail.

Adapting Web Scraping Routines to Changing Web Pages (AutoHotkey Tip) February 22, 2021

When the Horoscope Web Page I Use for E-mails Altered Its Format, I Quickly Adjusted the Script

I knew I could repair the Regular Expression (RegEx) in the broken script fairly quickly by following some basic steps:

1. Access the source code for the target Web page and locate the key text.
2. Copy the critical portion of the source code, including any unique HTML tags surrounding the target text, then paste the selection into Ryan’s RegEx Tester.
3. Adjust the RegEx to include key unique tags surrounding the text—then extracting the paragraph.
4. In the script, replace the old RegEx found in the RegExMatch() function with the new one from Ryan’s RegEx Tester.
5. Make any necessary adjustments to the RegEx—primarily escaping double quotation marks.

E-mail Success

Every e-mail server operates a little differently. It’s quite possible that some of them will not accept this type of automatic e-mail. Also, many place limits on how many e-mails you can send within a specific period of time. (This blocks people from sending an inordinate amount of Spam.) If you can’t get this script working for your AutoHotkey e-mail, then you may need to consult with your e-mail provider. Worst case, you can always set up a Gmail account just for use with AutoHotkey.

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(Any other mistakes are all mine.)

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Find my AutoHotkey books at ComputorEdge E-Books!

Find quick-start AutoHotkey classes at “Robotic Desktop Automation with AutoHotkey“!