Mailing List Module

Top  Previous Topic  Next Topic

 

This extensive and versatile module enables you to create mailing lists of your vendors.  You can create snail mail lists to send information by postal mail.  Or you can create email lists.

If you have Level III, you can even use a built-in Bulk Email Application to send out information to selected (or all) vendors.

The mailing list feature is also available in the Vendor Database.

The Level III Bulk Emailing Application is run directly from the Mailing List module.  You create the list, compose a message, and send out the emails all from the same location in AnyPO.  There are two prerequisites:  (a) you need a non-web based email account. (In other words, you need a typical account available from an Internet Service provider.  You can obtain such accounts for around $20 US per year.)  And (b) you need an account which provides a high enough daily limit adequate for the size of your vendor lists.

To reach the mailing list portion of the program, select OTHER TASKS from the Menu Bar and choose MAILING LIST.  The following screen appears:

POMail

 

First Steps for Level I - II Users

Level I - II Users: When the Mailing List Module opens, you'll see a list of all purchase orders placed in alphabetical order by the Vendor Name.  You'll probably see lots of duplicate names, but you'll be able to remove those shortly.

If you are making a snail mail list: The first thing that you'll want to do is to remove any incomplete address.  If an individual doesn't have an Address1 or City, then there's no sense including them on the list.  To remove incomplete addresses, select TOOLS >>SHOW ONLY THOSE WITH FULL SNAIL ADDRESSES.  As soon as you do that, you'll see anyone without an Address1 and City disappear from the list. More information.
If you are making an email list: Although Levels I - II do not include the bulk email application, you can, alternatively, create a list of emails to import into a third party email program.  If that's your plan, then you'll want to remove any empty email address.  That's done by selecting TOOLS >> SHOW ONLY THOSE WITH EMAIL ADDRESSES. More information.

 

 

First Steps for Level III Users

Level III Users: When you first enter the Mailing List module, a dialog box will appear asking whether you want to create a snail mail list or an email list:

POMail2

Select the appropriate response, and the program will automatically prepare the list for you.

If you are creating a snail mail list, it will remove anyone without a mailable address (in other words, it removes anyone missing Address1 and City).

If you are creating a email list, it will remove anyone that doesn't have an email address.  You can do both of these on your own by selecting from the TOOLS menu: SHOW ONLY THOSE WITH FULL SNAIL ADDRESSES or TOOLS >> SHOW ONLY THOSE WITH EMAIL ADDRESSES, but the program does this conveniently for you. More Information.

 

How to Create a Mailing in a Nutshell

The following is a brief description of how to create mailing lists:

1. Select Vendors. Once you've eliminated vendors without mailing or email addresses, the next step is indicate which vendors you want on the list.  This is explained in more detail below, but, briefly, you can either check off the vendors manually or you can use filters. Filters are really useful.  For example, you can set a filter so that the list is made up of vendors that purchased a certain product.

If you set a filter, only those vendors which meet the conditions of the filter will appear on the list.  Those that don't meet the conditions disappear from the list.  You'll still see duplicate names, but you'll be able to remove those shortly.

Once you set the filter, you need to follow it up, by selecting all of the vendors showing.  That's  easily done by clicking on the "Select All" button.

2. Remove Duplicates. Once the selections have been made, the next step is to get rid of duplicate names.  To do that click on the button: "Final Removal of Duplicates."   The duplicates won't disappear from the screen, but they will no longer be selected.  In other words, when you click on this button, AnyPO will remove the checkmarks from all duplicates.  The one name that remains selected will be the most recently entered name.   That's the one you want since the most recently created purchase order would have the vendor's most recent snail mail or email address.

3. Hone the List. At this point, you may wish to examine the list, doing some spot checking, or culling out a few more vendors.  The best way to do this is to make the unchecked duplicate names disappear from the screen.  You can do that by selecting TOOLS >> MAINTAIN FILTERS BUT HIDE UN-SELECTED RECORDS.  (More information: here.)  When you use this feature, all of the unchecked names will disappear and you'll be left with only those with checkmarks.

4. Create a file - Or send emails. If you have Levels I and II, you can create a file (by pressing the "Create Files" button) to be imported into a word processing or label program. If you have Level III you have the additional option to send an email to all selected vendors.  You would do that by clicking the "Prepare / Send Email" button.

More information on any of the above steps is found below.

 

Manually Selecting Vendors

You can select which names you want on the mailing list by clicking and placing a checkmark in the "Yes" column.   By clicking again, you can remove the checkmark.  You may also use the spacebar to check or uncheck the "Yes" column.

To select a group of vendors click on the first of the group.  Make sure a checkmark is beside the first member of the group.  Hold down the SHIFT key and select the last member of the group.  All the vendors between the two will be selected.  You can de-select a group by doing the same thing, but in this case, the first member of the group should not have a checkmark beside it.

You can move up and down on the spreadsheet by using the arrow keys, PageUp or PageDown on your keyboard.  You can also use the up and down VCR buttons on the lower right of the screen.

You can search for a name (or address or other field) by clicking the "Search" or "Adv Search" buttons.  Note the the search feature will only find names, addresses, etc. that appear on the screen.  For example, if you have filtered out all vendors from Great Britain, and if you try to search for a vendor that lives in Great Britain, a "Not Found" message will be triggered.  If you turn the filter off, then AnyPO will be able to find the vendor from Great Britain.

To find out how many purchase orders that you've selected, click on "Check Count."

To automatically select all of the vendors, click the "Select All" button or choose TOOLS >> SELECT ALL NAMES ON LIST from the menu bar.  To remove all selected vendors, click the "De-select All" button or choose TOOLS >> DE-SELECT ALL NAMES ON LIST from the menu bar.

 

Filtering the List

One of the most powerful ways to work with your mailing list is to use a filer.  By the use of a filter, you can create a mailing list for vendors from whom you have ordered a certain product, or for vendors with a designated purchase order code, or for vendors from certain country.  The filter function provides you with hundreds of different combinations.

To access the filter feature, click on the "Filter List" button (or select TOOLS >> FILTER WHICH NAMES ARE DISPLAYED from the menu bar).  This will bring up the filter dialog box, and you change what names are displayed by selecting different filters.

There's more on how to do this in the Filter chapter.  Granted, filter formulas do sound a little like Greek, but the filter dialog box will assist you in constructing sample filters.  It's just a matter of clicking on the plus signs: +.  Oftentimes that - and a bit of basic knowledge about filters - is enough to figure out what you need.  The beauty of this system is that by using a few filter tools, you can produce many different types of mailing lists, exactly tailored to your needs.

Once you have the filter set, the list of names appearing on the screen will be limited to the confines of your filter.  Any name that doesn't meet the conditions disappears from the screen.

Review the names of the vendors and make sure the list is correct.  If not, you can remove the filter by selecting TOOLS >> TURN FILTER OFF.

After setting and filter, and when everything looks correct, use the "Select All" button to select all vendors showing in the screen.

 

Final Removal of Duplicates

When you use a filter, only those vendors which meet the conditions of the filter will appear on the list.  But they haven't been selected yet.  You do that by clicking on the "Select All" button.  Checkmarks will appear beside all vendors.  Now all of the vendors on the filtered list are selected.

Invariably, however, you will end up with lots of duplicates that have checkmarks beside them.  The duplicates come from purchase orders issued to your vendors.  Every time you've made out an purchase order to the same vendor, their name will be repeated on the list.

But you can fix that.  To remove the checkmarks from duplicate vendor names or email addresses, click on the button:  "Final Removal of Duplicates."  You have three choices:

You can remove the checkmarks from duplicate email addresses.  Use this if you are creating an email list.
You can remove the checkmarks from duplicate names.  Using this for a traditional snail mail list.
You can remove the checkmarks from duplicate names and emails.  This is normally not used since it can remove some email addresses - or names - that should remain on the list.  It is available, however, if you have use for it.

When you run the removal process, AnyPO removes the checkmarks from the oldest purchase orders, but it leaves the vendor address (or email address) from the most recently issued purchase order.  The reason for this is that the newest purchase order will have the vendor's most recent address, and that's, of course, the address you want to use for mailing purposes

Be sure to wait until you've selected the vendors on the list either manually or by using the "Select All" button.  Once you have the vendors selected, then you can click on the "Final Removal of Duplicates" button.

If you need to hone the list some more after removing duplicates, you can hide all records without a checkmark by selecting TOOLS >> MAINTAIN FILTERS BUT HIDE UN-SELECTED RECORDS.  More about this feature below.

 

Using the Menu Option: Maintain Filters but Hide Un-selected Records

This useful feature is found under the TOOLS menu (at the top of the screen): TOOLS >> MAINTAIN FILTERS BUT HIDE UN-SELECTED RECORDS.

This is a special kind of menu item.  When it's turned on, you'll see a checkmark beside it on the menu.  When it is turned off, no checkmark shows.

You'll want to wait before using this feature until after you have selected vendors and after you have clicked on "Final Removal of Duplicates."

What this feature does is to set another filter in addition to any existing filters.  In this case, it filters out any record without a checkmark.  (If you were to view the filter, it would look like: .NOT. SELECT, meaning "filter out all names not selected."  In fact, if desired, you can view the filters that AnyPO is using by selecting TOOLS >> VIEW CURRENT FILTER)

Once you turn this feature on, all non-selected names disappear from the list.  This makes it easier to review your list.  You may find other names to remove, and you can do so by manually clicking and removing the checkmark.  After you do this, the name will disappear. NOTE: you may notice some doubling up of names while removing checkmarks.  That's because you are changing a filtered field, but you can clear things up and refresh the list by clicking the "Refresh" button on the top, right of the screen.

Since all names with a checkmark disappear, you won't be able to add any names to the list.  If you find that you are missing names - or you decide you need to set a different filter, you'll want to turn off this feature.  To turn it off,  select TOOLS >> MAINTAIN FILTERS BUT HIDE UN-SELECTED RECORDS again.  If you look at the menu, the checkmark will toggle off meaning that the feature is now off.

 

Bulk Email Application - Level III Feature

Level III Feature

The Bulk Email Application is found in the Mailing List module accessed by selecting MAIN TASKS >> MAILING LIST.

The Bulk Email Application consists of three buttons on the bottom of the screen:

Prepare / Send Email Message
Show Un-sent Emails
Remove Invalid Emails

Before using the Bulk Email Application, if you haven't already, you'll need to get the program set-up to use the email features.  That's done in Basic Program Set-up.  You'll want to make sure that you have a non-web based email account as described in Basic Program Set-up, and you'll need an account which provides you with enough daily capacity to send out emails to all vendors on the mailing list.

Helpful Hint: If you have a large number of vendors, it's a not a good idea to use your primary business email address for bulk emailing.  You'll end up getting lots of bounced emails and that will really clutter up your primary email inbox.  Use another email address for bulk mailings.

Here is more information information on each part of the process:

Prepare / Send Email Message. Before beginning the email process, you'll want to create the mailing list.  Follow the steps described above so that you end up with a list of selected vendors.

If you are on a network, it's best to do mailings when usage of AnyPO is light or non-existent.  Because of the time involved, large mailings are best done at the end of the day.

To begin the email process click on the "Prepare / Send Email Message" button. A dialog box will appear that allows you to compose a message.  The message will be saved.  If you get started preparing it, and must return to it later, your work will be retained.

You can insert the company or individual's name in the subject line or message by using the [NAME] substitution variable.   For example if you wrote "Greetings [NAME]!"  and the individual's name is Bill Wilson, the end result would be "Greetings Bill Wilson!."

You can also add one or more attachments to each of the emails going out.  To do so, click on the "Browse" button and select the attachments.

When the message is ready, click on the "Start Sending" button.

Before the sending process begins, one last dialog box will appear: "Store Information on This Mailing."  This allows you to keep a record of the mailing.  Enter a short descriptive title for the mailing.  It's optional but you can also enter more detailed information about the mailing.  You may wish to include information on how you made the selections and other helpful tidbits of information that will help you next time you do a mailing.  Along with the information that you enter, AnyPO will also save the following:

1. The date and time of the mailing

2. A copy of the filter that you used.

3. The purchase order number,  vendor name and purchase order date of the last purchase order covered by the mailing

4. The number of addresses you have selected for the mailing

After you enter the title of the mailing, the sending process begins.  You'll see a mailing form appear with the name of the vendor as each email is sent.  The amount of time required to send emails is dependent upon connection speeds, but you can figure an average of 12 minutes per 100 emails.  That means that 1,000 emails would take approximately 2 hours.

Because of the length of time involved, it's best to do bulk emailings at the end of the day or the evening.

When the process is complete AnyPO will trigger a message and indicate how many emails have been sent.  That doesn't mean that all emails will get through.  It's very likely that you will have bounced emails.  You'll be able to take care of those with the "Remove Invalid Email" function (below).

(Also, AnyPO will specifically list any emails that are missing the "@" character.  You probably won't have many, if any, of these.  But if you do, you'll want to do a search for them in your purchase order file and remove or correct the address.)

Show Un-sent Emails

Sending emails is not always a perfect process.  The email server may go down.  You may have a glitch with your Internet connection.  Your hourly or daily limit may be reached.  When something like that happens, everything stops, and you'll need to begin again in some manner.  But you wouldn't want to start all over and re-send the same emails to those that have already received them.

That's where the "Show Un-sent Emails" function comes in handy.  It's utilized after you do a mailing.  It's a good idea to click on this button after every bulk emailing - just in case.  To use it, ideally, you'll want to stay in the Mailing List module.  In other words, if the email process stops, try to avoid exiting and coming back to it.  Nevertheless, it will work if your program freezes up for some reason and you need to return to it.

When you click on the "Show Un-sent Emails" button, a message will appear telling you how many emails have NOT been sent.  If it says zero (0), then you don't have to worry about it.  But if you have anything over zero (0), then you'll want to continue with the process by clicking the "Yes" button when asked "Would you like to continue and view the list?"

At this point, AnyPO will run through your list, removing the checkmarks from emails that have been sent and leaving checkmarks beside emails that have not been sent.

With the un-sent emails selected, it's just a matter of re-running the Bulk Email Application.   Click on the "Prepare / Send Email Message" button to to start the process.  You'll see that your original email message  have been saved.  Continue by clicking the "Start Sending" button.  If you run into another snag and not all of this batch of emails are sent, you can repeat this process again.  You can repeat it as many times as necessary to get your bulk email sent off to all of your vendors.

Note that this list does not include bounced emails.  (Bounced emails will be taken care of next.)  It only lists unsent emails - those that were prevented from being sent because of a server or program problem.  Also note that this list is saved temporarily.  The list will be re-built if you use the Bulk Email Application again.

Remove Invalid Emails

Invariably, you'll end up with bounced emails.  Soon after the bulk email is sent, you'll find a batch of bounced emails in your inbox, and you'll get more over the next couple of days.

Since these are bad email addresses, you'll want to remove them from your purchase orders.  This feature, reached by clicking the "Remove Invalid Emails" button enables you to do that.

Note that this process removes email addresses from your purchase orders.  It doesn't remove them from the Vendor Database.  If you would like to remove these same addresses from your vendor database as well, select OTHER TASKS >> VENDOR ADDRESSES & NUMBERS.  Then select TOOLS >> SEND EMAILS TO SELECTED OR ALL VENDORS.  On the dialog box that appears, click on the "Remove Invalid Emails" button.  You can use the same tab delimited file and the same procedure as described below.

It highly recommended that you use this feature.  Getting rid of invalid addresses greatly speeds up the processing time next time you do a bulk emailing.  If you don't use it, the numbers of bounced emails will continue to  build up, and it will become more and more difficult to do away with them as time goes on.

You do not have to run this process right after a bulk mailing.  You can run it at any time.  You could, for example, come back to it a couple of weeks later.

The way this process works is that you'll provide AnyPO with a list of invalid emails.  AnyPO will take the first invalid email address, find it on an purchase order, and remove it.  It will look for another purchase order with the same email address, and if found, it will remove it.  It continues doing this until it finds all purchase orders with the same email address.  Then it looks for the next invalid email address on the list and repeats the process.  You can see that this involves a lot of searching and replacing, so you'll want to give this process time to run.

The key to using this process is preparing a list of bad email address.  There's a type of software program you can use to make preparing the list relatively painless.  The type of software is known as a clipboard extender or a clipboard manager.  Clipboard Magic is one example and it's a free program.  Clipmate is another example.  Clipmate costs ($35), but it's the one we use, and we're sure that you'll find it incredibly useful for this and other tasks.

Once you have Clipboard Magic or Clipmate installed.  Here are the steps you'll want to take:

1. To make the list, open your email inbox and start going through the bounced emails.

2. Copy the each bad email address to the clipboard.  Clipboard Magic or Clipmate will remember each copied email address.

3. When you are finished, open up a spreadsheet program.  You'll be pasting the email addresses in the first column of the spreadsheet, starting at the top row.  Both Clipboard Magic and Clipmate have a "Series Paste" or "Power Paste" feature.  When you turn on "Series Paste," you'll be able to paste each of the email address onto the spreadsheet.  You can create a list of bad emails in very little time.  By using the copy and a "Series Paste" technique, you are able to copy and paste the exact spelling and format of the bad email address.

4. Once you get the email addresses copied to the first column.  Save the spreadsheet as a "TAB DELIMITED" file.  Save it with a name like Bad_Emails.txt.  Place the file in the My_Files sub-directory of the AnyPO directory.  If AnyPO is installed to C:\AnyPO, you'll place it in C:\AnyPO\My_Files.  If AnyPO is installed to C:\Program Files, you'll place it in C:\Program Files\AnyPO\My_Files.

5. Click on the the "Remove Invalid Emails" button.  A dialog box appears briefly describing the information  above.  Enter the name of the file, i.e. "Bad_Email.txt." Then click on "Start Process."

AnyPO will remove the bad address.  As mentioned above, AnyPO has to do a lot searching and replacing, and you'll need to allow time for the process to run.

If you have correct email addresses for some of these vendors, run the above process first to clean out the bad addresses.  Then you can add the correct addresses.  You can do that from the Main Purchase Order Screen.  Use the search feature to find the vendor and type in the new email address.   You only need to add the corrected email address to one purchase order.

 

Information on Past Mailings - Level III Feature

If you have the Level III program, AnyPO will trigger a dialog box that allows you to enter a title for your mailing. You can optionally include more descriptive information.  Along with your information, AnyPO will include the date and time of the mailing, the filter used, the number of vendors selected, and the last purchase order number, date and number.

You can view this information by clicking on the "Information on Past Mailings" button.  The "Information on Past Mailing" dialog box appears.

One very useful function that is found on this dialog box is the ability to re-set a filter from a past mailing.  Let's say that you filtered for a certain product in your last mailing.  You can re-create the same filter by clicking on the "Use Same" button.  AnyPO will open the filter dialog box and paste your filter in place.  All you need to do is to set the filter (by clicking OK in the Filter dialog box), and then continue with the rest of the mailing list process .

 

Filtering and User Defined Fields  

You may want to utilize User Defined fields for setting up mailing list codes.  The longer size of the fields enables you to use more descriptive code names.  For instance, you might use "WILD" for vendors interested in wildlife books, "COMP" for vendors interested in computer books, etc.

One User Defined Field can handle several codes.  For instance, if you have a vendor who is interested in wildlife books and computer books, you could enter WILD COMP in one of the User Defined Fields.  You don't have to worry about duplicates. If Tina Baker has ordered from you on several occasions, and you code her purchase orders the same each time, you'll be able to use "Final Removal of Duplicates" to remove the extras.

To create a mailing list from User Defined Fields, filter for one of the codes.  Let's say you are using the first User Defined Field for mailing codes and you want to create a "wildlife" mailing list.  You would begin by selecting TOOLS and FILTER WHICH NAMES ARE DISPLAYED.  This will bring up the filter dialog box.  Type in a filter formula.  If you are using the first User Defined Field for your mailing codes, the formula would be "WILD" $ UserDef2->UserDef1.  If you want to create a list which combines wildlife and computer books, the formula would be "WILD" $ UserDef2->UserDef1 .OR. "COMP" $ UserDef2->UserDef1.

After you enter the filter formula and exit from the filter dialog box, a list conforming to the filter will appear on the screen.  If the list is what you want, you can use the "Select All" feature - or you can hand select those addresses that you want.

 

View Mailing List from Spreadsheet

This option is reached by selecting FILE >> VIEW MAILING LIST FROM SPREADSHEET from the menu bar.  It gives you an additional way to view selected names and addresses.

In order to use this option, you must first select the addresses you want by clicking on them -- or by using a filter and using the "Select All" button.  Then you can activate this feature.  Microsoft Excel (or a spreadsheet of your choice) will start up with the names and addresses in place.  You can use this feature as a way to print a copy of the mailing list for your records.  Or you can use this feature to create an Excel file which in turn can be used by your label printing software.

 

Show Full Snail Address & Show Email Address

Under the TOOLS menu on top of the Mailing List Module screen, you'll see two choices:

Show Only Those With Full Snail Address
Show Only Those With Email Address

The first "Show Only Those With Full Snail Address" removes any vendor with an incomplete mailing address.  If you are creating a mailing list to send through the post office, then it doesn't make sense to include any vendors that don't have an Address1 or City.  To remove incomplete addresses, select TOOLS >>SHOW ONLY THOSE WITH FULL SNAIL ADDRESSES.  As soon as you do that, you'll see anyone without an Address1 and City disappear from the list.

This is a special menu item that is toggled on and off.  You'll see a checkmark beside it in the menu when it's turned on (in other words, when those without a full mailing address are not shown).  The checkmark is removed when you turn it off (in other words, those vendors with incomplete address will be shown.)

The second choice removes empty email addresses.  You'll want to use it if you are doing a bulk emailing to your vendors.  To turn it on, select TOOLS >> SHOW ONLY THOSE WITH EMAIL ADDRESSES.  This menu item is also toggled on and off.  When it's on, a checkmark shows beside the menu item (meaning that empty email addresses will not show).  When it's off (empty email addresses will show), the checkmark is removed.

If either one or both of these are turned on (a checkmark appears besides the menu item), you can quickly turn them off by selecting TOOLS >> SHOW ALL.

Both of these options are actually filters.  You can see the filter by selecting TOOLS >> VIEW CURRENT FILTER.

When you select "Show Only Those With Full Snail Address," the filter looks like:

.NOT. EMPTY(Bill_Name) .AND. .NOT. EMPTY(Address1) .AND. .NOT. EMPTY(City)

When you select "Show Only Those With Email Address," the filter looks like:

.NOT. EMPTY(EmailAdd)

If you are creating your own filters, such as filtering for vendors that purchased a specific product, AnyPO combines your filter with the filters above.  You can always see the complete filter that is being used by selecting TOOLS >> VIEW CURRENT FILTER.

 

Selecting the Directory

The default directory where the mailing list is placed is AnyPO\Labels, but you can change the directory to another of your own choosing.  To change the directory, select FILE >> DESIGNATE A DIRECTORY FOR MAILING LIST FILES.

 

Creating Mailing List Files

To create the mailing list, click on the button:  "Create Files."  Or you can select FILE >> MAKE NEW MAILING LIST.  Two files will be created: MailList.dbf and MailList.txt. MailList.dbf is a file in a dBase format, a common database format accepted by many word processing and label programs.  They will be placed in the directory you've designated for mailing list files.  If you haven't designated a directory, they will be placed in the default directory of AnyPO\Labels.

However, just in case you have a program that doesn't accept dBase files, a second, more generic, file is created called MailList.txt. MailList.txt is a "delimited" file where each name or address field is surrounded by quotation marks and separated by commas.  Here's an example:  "XYZ Company","201 South Main","Boise","ID","83465"  A delimited file is a very basic form of a database file and is accepted by nearly all word processing and labeling programs.

Once MailList.dbf or MailList.txt are created, you can then open your word processing or labeling program and import the file as you would any database for merging or label making purposes. The documentation that came with your word processing or labeling program will give you details on how to import and use files.

After creating MailList.dbf and MailList.txt, you can, if desired, add more addresses to the existing files.  To do so, select the additional addresses by typing a "Y" in the "Y" column, and then choose FILE >> ADD TO NAMES ALREADY IN MAILLIST.  This takes the existing file and appends the new names to it.

For more information on the two files created: File Details on MailList.dbf and MailList.txt

Some uses of the mailing list files may require more flexibility in the fields that make up MailList.dbf and MailList.txt.  For example, if you are importing the mailing files into a newsletter application on a website, you may need to import the fields in a certain order, and you may need additional fields not found in MailList.dbf or MailList.txt.

To change the order of fields or add fields, use AnyPO's Export module.  In the Export module, you can design a profile which has exactly the kind of structure required.  After creating the profile, return to the first dialog of the Export series, and under "Select PO's to be Exported" select the following option: "Use a Combination of a Selection List and Filter." When you start the export, the Mailing List module will appear, and you'll have access to all of the mailing list features with the added advantage of being able to create an export file made up of your selection of fields.

 

Unique & First Appearing Names

Most likely you'll rarely, if ever, use this feature.  It is reached by selecting TOOLS >> UNIQUE AND FIRST APPEARING NAMES

What it does is to remove all duplicate vendor names, but, there's an important difference from "Final Removal of Duplicates" described above.  In this case, AnyPO removes the names from the newest purchase orders and leaves the oldest.  Normally, you would want to use the name from the newest purchase order since that would have the vendor's latest address.

This behavior is actually the same of the "Vendor Names - No Duplicates" found on the "All Vendors Pop-up List.

This feature would only be useful if you keep your vendors' first purchase orders updated with the latest snail and email addresses.  Once you select this option, you can set a filter and otherwise manipulate which vendors are included on the list.  You can create files for mailing list and you can send emails using the bulk email application.