VBO mass email via local email client

Question

I have a drupal 7 view diplaying nodes containing an email address field. I would like the user to be able to select multiple rows and then execute an action that simply open his own email client with a new message with all the email addresses in the To: field. I don't want to let users send mass emails via my website but give them an easy way to send emails to many addresses at thew same time via their local email client.

Answer 1

try integrating the Views Send Module, the instructions specifically mention VBO:

Views Send enables you to send mass mailing from a View.

Since you aren't able to install new modules, it could be done this way:

• Create the view as a table of fields, include the email address as EMAIL PLAIN TEXT

• add the VBO field, Save Content (you can choose anything you want, but this seems the least offensive)

• add some css:

  #views-form-email-test-page #edit-select {   display:none; }
  

  This will hide the VBO button since we are overriding its functionality manually

• add a header, Global Text:

  <button type="button" onclick="emailUsers(); return false;">email users</button>
  

• add a modified version (modified for view and field names) of this JS to your html.tpl.php, or drupal_add_js, or by whatever other means you want:

  function emailUsers()
  {
      var toField = '';
  
      jQuery('#views-form-email-test-page table tbody tr').each(function()
      {
          if(jQuery('.views-field-views-bulk-operations div input', this).is(':checked'))
          {
              toField += jQuery('.views-field-field-address', this).html() + ',';
          }
      });
  
      if(toField.length > 0) window.location.href = "mailto:" + toField;
      else alert('Please select at least one user to email!');
  }
  

This all assumes:

• the View machine name is name email_test
• the View is a page
• the field holding the email address is field_address

EDIT FROM OP:

Thank you very much Geoff, your solution works very well, I've learned a few things and I hope it will be usefull for others in the futures, indeed I was quite surprised not to find anything when I searched befor posting. Since my email field was also a link I've used the following code

tmp = jQuery('.views-field-field-applicant-email', this).html(); tmp2 = jQuery(tmp.replace('mailto:','')); toField += jQuery(tmp2).attr('href') + ',';

instead of

toField += jQuery('.views-field-field-address', this).html() + ',';

not very elegant may be (I'm not a programmer) but it works! for some strange reasons I cannot upvote your answer, sorry.