I use the mail merge feature to send out and an email to each contact that I add throughout the day.  It is the same every time and I never send it to multiple contacts.  

Here are the steps to do a simple mail merge to a single contact:

1. Pull down the Write menu
2. Choose mail merge
3. Choose Email
4. Click Next
5. Browse to the email that I would like to send
6. Click next
7. Choose current contact
8. Click Next
9. Type the subject (even though it doesn't change each time) 
10. Click Next
11. Set the missing email options
12. Click next
13. Click Finish

I can add a custom menu item to the Write menu bar in 2010, but it would be good to add an email template.

Nice to send a quick thank you after an order or have set info templates to answer common question.

Even better if the menu could include an attachment and set a default subject... better yet if the subject could include merged data from a field.

We actually did all this with MergeMaster! for ACT! 5/6 via a Profiles section.

Currently ACT does not recognize an incoming  "Read Receipt" email in Outlook as a valid email.  Consequently it will not add it to the history for a particular contact.  I do work where I send out RFP's to vendors followed by extensive communications with those vendors.  I track read receipts to ensure that what I sent out got to the reader.If I don't get the read receipt I need to follow-up manually by phone to ensure it did get through (because some vendors turn off read receipts).  I was really expecting that ACT would assist me in tracking this.

At the very least - ACT should recognize read receipts and add them to contact history

Even better - optionally automatically link the read receipt to my outgoing email and allow me to display it as another column in the history tab - that would make it very easy to identify that I had a read receipt and for which email it was associated. (maybe a colored flag - green for read-receipt received, yellow for too early to tell and Red for no receipt received - user configurable of course).  I'm assuming here of course that there is some uniquely identifiable identifier in an email and its associated read-receipts that would them to be linked.

And then - give me reporting options to identify emails where I asked for a read receipt but didn't receive one - this lets me manually follow up to ensure the reader did or didn't receive my email.

There is a sizable group of ACT! users that happen to be Thunderbird users as well. In terms of complaints, this appears to be one of the big things ACT! users continue to talk about.

All we want is an alternative to ACT! mail and Outlook.

Let me put it this way:

Your great aunt and uncle are coming into town from Connecticut. Because you are their favorite grand-nephew they decide to take you out to dinner at a restaurant that is renown for only serving clams.

But you're allergic to clams.

You can't very well leave the restaurant. Your great aunt and uncle would hate you for it and the maitre d is a bipolar ex-guerrilla from Guatemala who happens to be carrying a 9mm on his person, and would be VERY insulted if you walked out the door. 

You don't want those clams because you know that eventually you will swell up like a balloon and suffocate to death or begin convulsing in anaphylactic shock. A bead of sweat drips down your forehead and you feel hot from the mounting pressure.

That settles it. It's time to do something drastic...

You leap out of your seat and grab the nearest chair out from under another patron's bottom and hurl it through the nearest window.

Before defenestrating yourself, you grab a fistful of silver dinner knives and tiny crab forks in case the maitre-d has enough time to realize what is going on and draw his gun. You fling what you have, as you hurl through the shattered window, at the maitre-d, a knife striking him square in the forehead.

Go. Run! The sous-chef is brandishing a ladle and oregano, shouting angrily.

Your only hope of survival is to find a method of transportation. Audi... locked. BMW... too James Bond. Then you see it: The Unicycle. It can outperform any vehicle in its one-wheeled handling. It is literally capable of stopping and turning on a dime, not like those huge boats other people claim are cars. The chrome of the fork shines in the street lamp lit night.

So, you see, it is important to have options when using software. People have preferences that others might not consider options in the first place because they're so limited with their initial choices.

Give us what we want.

Don't make us eat clams.

Give us Thunderbird.

1. For each template you create for emails, you should have the option of being able to set the subject line.

I dont send mass emails, I send out templated emails to different contacts every day, and I have to type the subject line in for every one i send out, even if there the same subject to different contacts. I only use about eight different email templates, every one has the same subject line relevent to the template I'm sending. I understand that if your going to blast a ton of emails, you only have to type the subject line once, do the mail merge and its done. However, I'm emailing different contacts throughout the day a set template email and every time i send it i have to type the subject line.

I'm truly bored of retyping the same subject line over and over. Due to the time requirements they must be sent individually so I cant "batch" them at the end of the day. I flatly refuse to buy high impact email to do this trivial thing.

So the solution is to include a field in the email template merge fields where you can set the subject line or not.

2. Ensure that the user/admin can set up a one click email template button on the toolbar Currently you cannot do a one click email template launch. You have to go to Write > email from template > choose email. Therefore you are unable to create any buttons which will launch user defined email templates.

It's a common request to add the ability to modify the template used for the Email to participents when scheduling an activity.

One extra thing that would be useful to to add a URL to Google Maps to show the location.

Note: if you do this, it would also need to be able to select between the User location, one of the Contacts or a separatelocation based on the Location field.

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Australia

Join the LinkedIN ACT! Fanatics Group - http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=49896