Variables never work

Hello all!

I’m trying to make Templates with variables working, but no way i get them to expand.
My simple template is:

Hello {Full Name},


Umberto

And i set as mail answer template.
Every time i reply a mail, i get this template activated but no way the {Full Name} or any other variable to be expanded.

Any hints please? This is driving me nuts!

Umberto

Yeah, it’s frustrating, but it does work as long as the recipient is in your Contacts.

The variable is replaced by the data from the Contact only when you click Send. It can be embarrassing if the results are not what you expect as there is no preview. ;-(

A workaround is to use the Send Later option, so you will have a chance to preview the outgoing message while it is sitting in your Outbox.

AH!

I expected that just after creating the reply mail, variables would already be expanded, considering that i’m not doing mass mail this should be the most logical behavior. Having the name in the contact list is not always an idea… i always need to reply a lot of people that write me only one email and adding them to my contacts would blows contact list for nothing.

What i say is that this feature is good for mass mailing but not good for single mail reply, which is my main usage. Under this point of view TheBat behaves extremely better as it shows you the final mail without any uncertainity just when you are editing it.

Hope this can be addressed or i would start to reconsider my hated/loved TheBat license… :frowning: Umberto

1 Like

Yes, I totally agree. I proposed it as an idea on the old forum some years back. quick text variable preview

I didn’t like the “some years back” part :sweat_smile:

I know. That was almost 3 years ago. From what I remember on the old forum, it did not get any votes, although there were a few comments.

Don’t know if it can be useful or not, i wrote to the customer support exposing my reasons.

I really don’t understand why a feature that i can consider to be “common” in most eMail clients here is not supported. Maybe all emClient users are mass marketing users?

If you are going to offer us variable then do it right or don’t do it al all.

@johncesta i don’t think this is fair. I guess the current variables system was designed as is because of a specific need. So (considering this need) the current system may be nice, I don’t know as I don’t need to use it this way.

Now, it could be interesting to understand what the majority thinks of this argument. My guessing is that many like the current implementation (as it is the current implementation), that said I find it useless for my needs and I must say that I was surprised not to see a “single message centric” implementation like many other email clients.

The fact that my initial tought was “variables never work” may be considered by developers as a warning flag, i suppose.

To say variables never work is incorrect, because they do. Every time exactly as they should.

What is missing is a feature that gives a preview of the message before sending. But that may be because they were specifically designed to work with the mass mail feature, where a preview would not be possible before sending.

But using the Send Later option you can get your preview while they are in the Outbox; just in case you want to check that they did, in fact, work.

Yes, in fact after your explanation in understood how variables work. But my initial tought was they didn’t work because my “other email client usage background” made me think they should work differently. Or, at least, also in a different way.

Anyway, i think i’ll never use the send later workaround just for the pleasure of using variables. This would made my emailing process slower, just to write one’s name. Then better not using variables at all and write everything by hand. But, what emClient commercials says “the best email client”, well… it could be better :smiley:

I agree. I am beginning to think this thing is riddled with bugs. I can outline many and will if support wishes to hear them.

Does no good in the forum because this is like a forest when a tree falls.

I had high hopes for em client. I can use it for two things: Mass email and tasks and contacts seems to work ok. But even contacts have a very poor importing feature in that it does’t display the extra fields to import to only the basic ones. You cannot change the names of the fields. There is no facility to make extra fields. and so on and so forth.

Anyway, enough crybaby from me.

Where are the bugs in variables. Please “outline” them here.

I am referring to bugs in emc itself.

The only “bugs” or design considerations in variables are those that have already been mentioned. There is no facility to at least view at least one. The ability to view at lease the first record gives the user peace of mind.

So that is not a bug. It is a feature request for something that is not included. I gave a link above for the proposal I already made to include this as a feature.

For peace of mind, you can use the Send Later feature to confirm it is working as it should.

I can do a lot of things but the one that should be in the design is not there. Period.
With all due respect sir.

Please, i didn’t start the thread with polemic intentions. I’m an emClient newbie and i been fascinated by the application itself. I must say that after trying it for a while i discovered some shortcomings and i whish i’d able to help developers to make emClient better.
I’m a developer myself and i know how difficult is to please all the user base. That said, i feel that a better variable system would be welcomed by many as i feel some angry from others when taking on the argument. @Gary, would be voting on the original thread a mean to highlight the request to the dev team, or is it a too dated topic?

On the previous forum we were able to vote on an idea, no matter how dated it was, and this was used by the developers as an indicator of the interest in a feature request. Those requests that showed sufficient interest would be considered by the team.

On this forum, even though the previous threads were brought across, the vote count does not display, so it is not clear how interested other users are in the feature, except by their comments.