Can we exclude or remove students from an email, SMS, letter or in-app message?

In Arbor, there isn't the option to select a whole group for a mail merge, then remove certain recipients before sending. For example, an email to your whole school apart from one student. You can see how to manage this below.

Please note that you can unsubscribe someone from communications, or delete a recipient's email before sending, but this will prevent them from receiving all mail merge communications.

If you only have a few students to message, you can select the individual students/guardians here.

Set up bespoke mailing lists for mail merge communications

You might need to send a communication to:

• a specific group - you may need to send to a group of students/guardians that are not selectable in the To box, such as students with a certain SEN status, FSM or guest pupils.
• your whole school excluding certain students - you might need to exclude some students from communications to the whole school, such as students at your alternative provision or nursery. You can't deselect students when sending a new mail merge communication.

To do this, you can set up a Custom Group. For example, you can see how to create a group specifically for SEN students here. You'll then be able to select the custom group when sending a new mail merge communication.

When adding students, you don't have to add them manually. You can use automatic criteria in the Setup tab to filter down your group to include student groups, and exclude certain other groups or students.

Top Tip: If you want to add all students except a few, or all the students you want to add to your group are all in the same Registration Form, there's a quicker way! Start typing to filter the box, then click control (cmd on Mac) + A to select all students. You can then click the X to remove certain students.

Exclude from communications using Bulk Actions

You can exclude students/guardians if you're sending the communication from certain pages that have Bulk Actions. This includes:

• In the Custom Report Writer: Which Custom Reports Writer reports can I send communications from?
• The Lesson Dashboard and intervention, internal exclusion and detention sessions
• The Applicants area
• The Birthdays, Joiners and Leavers reports
• Assessment marksheets and when clicking into measures in Assessment analysis
• Attendance pages to follow up with absentees or lates
• Wraparound care, clubs and trips
• Many other pages

Just tick the students you want to send communications for (don't tick the students you want to exclude), then click the Bulk action button to select the communication option. You would need to repeat this for different classes, for example.