Schedule a Mail Merge campaign

On a paid plan, open Start New Campaign, go to the Schedule tab, choose Schedule for later, pick a date and time in your local time zone and click Schedule Campaign. Google then runs the campaign from your account at about that time, even if the sheet is closed.

Who can schedule campaigns?

Scheduling is part of the paid plans. On the free plan, choosing Schedule for later shows an upgrade prompt, and you can click Skip & send now to send right away instead. See Plans and billing.

How do I schedule a campaign?

Set up the sheet and the Gmail draft as in Get started.
Open Start New Campaign from the sidebar or from Extensions → Mail Merge for Sheets™ Gmail™ → 📧 Start New Campaign.
On 1. Select Draft, pick the draft. On 2. Campaign Options, set tracking, reply-to address, sender name and attachments.
On 3. Schedule, set When to send to ⏰ Schedule for later.
In Choose date and time, pick a time in the future.
Click Send Test Email and check the result in your inbox.
Click Schedule Campaign. You see “Your campaign has been scheduled successfully!”

Which time zone is used?

Your local time zone, taken from your browser. The dialog shows “⏰ Times are set in your local timezone”. If you schedule while traveling, or for recipients in another time zone, convert the time to your own time zone first.

Will it send at the exact minute?

Not always. The add-on creates a one-time Google Apps Script trigger for the time you picked. Google runs it at about that time, and Apps Script time triggers can run a few minutes late. Don’t rely on scheduling when the exact minute matters.

Do I need to keep the sheet open?

No. The campaign runs in the background from your Google account. You can close the sheet and your computer. To be safe, don’t delete the draft and don’t rename or delete the tab until the campaign has run.

Can I schedule more than one campaign?

You can have one scheduled campaign per sheet tab. To send different lists at different times, put each list on its own tab and schedule each tab separately.

To change the time or the draft of a scheduled campaign, cancel it first, then schedule it again.

How do I cancel a scheduled campaign?

Open the tab with the scheduled campaign.
Go to Extensions → Mail Merge for Sheets™ Gmail™ → 📊 Open Campaign Report.
Click Cancel Scheduled Campaign.

🧹 Clean Current Campaign also cancels it, but it removes all Mail Merge statuses and notes on the tab too, and that cannot be undone.

What happens when the campaign runs?

A scheduled run works like Send immediately:

Rows that already have a status such as EMAIL_SENT or SKIP are skipped.
Each sent row gets EMAIL_SENT and a note with the time.
Failed rows get Error: and the reason.

Google’s limits apply in the same way: about 100 recipients a day on @gmail.com, 1,500 on Google Workspace, and 6 minutes per run. Keep the number of unsent rows on the tab within your daily limit. If a run stops early, start the campaign again to send the remaining rows. See Gmail sending limits and Fix common errors.

To check the result, open the sheet, look at the Mail Merge column, or open the Campaign Report.

What scheduling can’t do

Recurring schedules. There is no daily or weekly repeat. Each schedule runs once.
Follow-ups. There are no follow-up sequences or automatic follow-up emails.
Continue tomorrow. If a campaign hits Google’s daily limit, it does not continue by itself the next day. Run it again yourself, or split the list into tabs and schedule each tab for a different day.

Gmail™, Google Sheets™ and Google Workspace™ are trademarks of Google LLC.