# Variable for email address

**URL:** <https://community.parabola.io/t/variable-for-email-address/2252>\
**Category:** Ask a question\
**Created:** [February 2, 2022, 9:23pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/variable-for-email-address/2252 "2022-02-02T21:23:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Annika\_Cederblad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e57/32.png) [@Annika\_Cederblad](https://community.parabola.io/u/Annika_Cederblad)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2022, 9:23pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/variable-for-email-address/2252/1 "2022-02-02T21:23:22Z")

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When using the Email a CSV Attachment step, does the email address need to be hard-keyed or is there a way to use a variable for the email field?

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**Author:** ![daniel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.parabola.io/daniel/32/732_2.png) [@daniel](https://community.parabola.io/u/daniel)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2022, 9:45pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/variable-for-email-address/2252/2 "2022-02-02T21:45:55Z")

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Hi @Annika_Cederblad, 👋

The Email a CSV attachment step does require the recipient’s email address to be hard-keyed.

We do have a [Send emails by row](https://parabola.io/integration/send-emails) step that will allow you to dynamically send email addresses using {text-merge} values.

The tradeoff here is that you won’t be able to send an attachment, but the data can be inserted into the email body as a custom template. Would that work as a potential solution?

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**Author:** ![Annika\_Cederblad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e57/32.png) [@Annika\_Cederblad](https://community.parabola.io/u/Annika_Cederblad)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2022, 10:38pm UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/variable-for-email-address/2252/3 "2022-02-02T22:38:29Z")

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Thanks @daniel! It may work - here is what I’m trying to achieve-

1. A grid-format (columns and rows) with the data
2. Multiple rows in the attachment or email. Right now I have a let’s say 100 rows total, and each row has a column with the email address. There are only 4 different email addresses - I don’t want to send each email address 25 different emails, but instead send each email address 1 email with 25 rows.

Thoughts?

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**Author:** ![daniel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.parabola.io/daniel/32/732_2.png) [@daniel](https://community.parabola.io/u/daniel)\
**Post date:** [February 3, 2022, 12:04am UTC](https://community.parabola.io/t/variable-for-email-address/2252/4 "2022-02-03T00:04:41Z")

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Got it, @Annika_Cederblad !

In order to create a grid, you would need to configure an [HTML table](https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tables.asp) in your email body. This can be done by defining your column headers and inserting your column variables between each `<td>` tag.

This can work with smaller/static datasets, but for larger datasets, it can become challenging to create a dynamic HTML table. You could try constructing your HTML templates within your Parabola flow by using a Merge duplicate rows step.

This example would merge duplicate email addresses together and list the associated colors for each email:

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/uploads/parabola/original/2X/1/1b7ad57f3de981b18c78390358d24f977c160d4e.png)

In your case, merge your data so that each column would look like a comma-separated list containing the values from each row in a single cell.

This is certainly a workaround for the time being, but sending email attachments to variable email lists is on our radar.