Sending SMS from Excel using iMessage

[Nicole Jones]

Hi

Just wondering if anyone has has used VBA coding to send an automatic SMS from and iPad using iMessage.

I have a spreadsheet that we using to schedule our workers and would like the spreadsheet to send them an SMS rather than individually sending them myself or using an external software program. Has anyone done anything like this?

Thx for your help
Nicole

 

[ajetrumpet]

Nicole,

I don't use apple products because I've always disliked Jobs for using inexpensive Chinese labor to produce products for pennies and sell them for thousands. but to the point of your question, I have sent SMS messages from an email account, and sending emails can be done in turn through VBA. I don't know anything about iMessage, but I know for a fact that apple has a serious problem with allowing a lot of different software that has no issues (or very little) to run on their devices. I had a conversation with an apple agent today that informed me that you can't run Java-based apps on their iPads for security reasons. which of course it just plain stupid, IMO. Google has no problem allowing Java. if you explore the email route as a workaround instead of using iMessage, this is what you need: SMS gateway - Wikipedia. But I seriously doubt you're going to find compatibility between Microsoft's stuff like Visual Basic and a built-in apple feature like iMessage. Those 2 are competitors. Aside from the rare one-time occcurance when Steve Jobs enlisted help from Bill Gates to fund his operation, I doubt they agreed on much outside of hardward and software.

 

[jchebert1979]

Nicole,

I don't use apple products because I've always disliked Jobs for using inexpensive Chinese labor to produce products for pennies and sell them for thousands. but to the point of your question, I have sent SMS messages from an email account, and sending emails can be done in turn through VBA. I don't know anything about iMessage, but I know for a fact that apple has a serious problem with allowing a lot of different software that has no issues (or very little) to run on their devices. I had a conversation with an apple agent today that informed me that you can't run Java-based apps on their iPads for security reasons. which of course it just plain stupid, IMO. Google has no problem allowing Java. if you explore the email route as a workaround instead of using iMessage, this is what you need: SMS gateway - Wikipedia. But I seriously doubt you're going to find compatibility between Microsoft's stuff like Visual Basic and a built-in apple feature like iMessage. Those 2 are competitors. Aside from the rare one-time occcurance when Steve Jobs enlisted help from Bill Gates to fund his operation, I doubt they agreed on much outside of hardward and software.

This thread really interested me. I knew about sending emails to SMS, but if I am reading the SMS Gateway wiki correctly, wether your original data was in Excel, Open Office, etc., you still have to import it to Google Sheets. Is this correct?

Also, when using iMessage and the recipient doesn't have an iPhone, the text is sent via SMS, or you can turn iMessage off and still send SMS texts. Do you think this would make any difference in doing what Nicole originally wanted to do in regards to Apple's compatibility?

 

[ajetrumpet]

if I am reading the SMS Gateway wiki correctly, wether your original data was in Excel, Open Office, etc., you still have to import it to Google Sheets. Is this correct?

jc, Google sheets has nothing to do with what I mentioned. the SMS gateway is the medium that you need to use to sent an SMS text message from an *email* account to a *phone number*. it doesn't matter where the data comes from or where the data ends up after the receiver transfers it from their phone texting app to somewhere else. the transfer medium is SMS. if you want to send large pieces of data blocks like things you would get out of excel, that would be really impractical via SMS because it's a text message. you can also send the same types of content using SMS gateway that you can send when you send a literal text message from phone to phone, like image files, links, etc.... I've never attempted to send an excel file or anything like that, so if that's what you want it would be up to you to experiment.

Also, when using iMessage and the recipient doesn't have an iPhone, the text is sent via SMS, or you can turn iMessage off and still send SMS texts. Do you think this would make any difference in doing what Nicole originally wanted to do in regards to Apple's compatibility?

I have no idea. like I said I don't use apple's products. It sounds to me like you know more about iMessage than either her or I do. from this last quote by you, it sounds like you could tell Nicole more about this than I can.

 

[jchebert1979]

AJ: Yeah, I didn't pay attention to the OP's post and went and learned how to send SMS messages from an Excel spreadsheet without using VBA and by transferring it to Google Sheets.

Nicole: I tried to use VBA to set up Excel to send text messages, but since I have a Mac running Excel, I couldn't install CDOsys which VBA needs to do this. So it definitely can't be done on an iPhone or iPad.

So, if you want your employees to receive their schedule by text, I think the quickest way is using an email client and the MMS gateway. You could convert the schedule spreadsheet to a picture file and send it out to all the employees at once with their MMS gateway addresses. The biggest problem would be finding out each employees cellular carrier for their MMS addresses, but you only need to do that once. Once you have all of their MMS addresses you can enter them into your email client as a group and then attach the schedule picture to the email and send it to all of them at once. If you NEED to do it from your iPhone or iPad, you could get an email client from the App Store. You could set up an automatic email for a certain date after each new schedule is made. I know it's not what you asked for, but I hope it helps you out.

 

[jchebert1979]

Ugh, I'm just dumb tonight. If you have to convert the schedule to a picture, you can just import it to your phone, set up a group from your iOS contacts (provided you have all of your employees in your contacts), and just attach the picture to the group then text it.

 

[ajetrumpet]

I remember working with CDOsys years ago. But i seem to remember using it for a different purpose rather than sending a text message....

 

[Nicole Jones]

Firstly I would just love to say, you guys are awesome.

Secondly, I don't think I was really clear explaining myself originally.....

Years ago I could VBA code an automatic email to go out picking out data from a certain cell (or 2). What I am after now using a SMS (which I believe ajetrumpet has steered me in the right direction), is to send some common text, eg "Tomorrow you are working at" and then the address of the site would be pulled from a cell (found by a formula which would probably just be a vlookup).

I did have a funny feeling that I wouldnt be able to do it with apple (I agree, I dont like Apple products either...but getting that through to my boss is whole nother battle I cannot concur). I will just have to give my boss the bad news to inform him that he will have to log into his laptop to send the SMSs once I set it up.

Actually one final query just to make sure I have it all straight in my mind....does VBA work on apple products at all? (originally created in Microsoft)

Thank you all again, you have been amazing help

Cheers
Nicole

 

[ajetrumpet]

hat I am after now using a SMS (which I believe ajetrumpet has steered me in the right direction), is to send some common text, eg "Tomorrow you are working at" and then the address of the site would be pulled from a cell (found by a formula which would probably just be a vlookup).

Nicole,

You should also be aware, if you aren't, that sending long text messages through any medium (phone, or email account) results in the receiver seeing broken messages (piece meal) show up on their phone, and a lot of times it's completely erroneous because the broken messages do not appear in the order that the original message was written in. for instance, if you send this message to a phone:

Hi Jarred,

You are working tomorrow 1/21/2020 at 9pm CST. We have created a schedule for you for the next week and will be
informing you every evening at 5pm of your next day's assignment and the time you are expected to arrive at your work location.

If you have any questions for us in this regard, please reply to this message or email us directly at: support@company.com. Thank you for choosing to work with us!

more than likely, the receiver will see the message broken up into ''X'' different messages, that are not necessarily received in the right order. What I've seen happen many times after running many tests on my many different smart phones and carriers is, if I were using the above example message, this would show up on Jarred's phone:

MESSAGE 1:

We have created a schedule for you for the next week and will be
informing you every evening at 5pm of your next day's assignment and the time you are expected to arrive at your work location.

MESSAGE 2:

Hi Jarred,
You are working tomorrow 1/21/2020 at 9pm CST.

If you have any questions for us in this regard, please reply to this message or email us directly at: support@company.com.

does VBA work on apple products at all? (originally created in Microsoft)

If you can run programs like Excel on an apple product, it's very possible that VBA code will execute as well, because VBA is part of office products, it's not a stand-alone language or platform. VBA is an extension to the classic-style language Visual Basic, just like jQuery is an extension of Javascript for web applications. To be sure that your assumption is accurate though Nicole, you should run your own tests.

 

[RoryA]

VBA will not run on an iPad or iPhone, but will run on a Mac (although there are differences in behaviour and, occasionally, syntax) as long as you aren't using Excel 2008.