Creating Subscriber Reports

This interface allows a site administrator or list owner to obtain reports on subscribers and their subscription settings. There are three main steps to creating a report:

  • Select a list from the pulldown menu.
  • Click on "Customize Report" and choose the columns of information about the subscribers that you want to include in the report.
  • Click "Update" to run and display the report.

Once the report has been generated, it's possible to change subscription settings or delete one or more subscribers. It's also possible to add subscribers to the list.


Report Column Selection

To select the columns for your report, click on "Customize Report" and check one or more boxes under "Report Columns", and then click the "Update" button to display the relevant subscription options for the users displayed. To check all boxes, click on "Check All". To clear all the report definition selections, click on "Uncheck All".

There are a number of settings that can be reported, depending on which of the checkboxes are selected. Each column heading in the report is clickable and will sort the column in ascending or descending order. A small arrow pointing up or down will appear indicating the order.

The filter row allows you to narrow the data that is displayed in the table. For example, if you only want to see users who subscribed in 2016, type 2016 in the "Subscription Date" filter box. If you only want to see subscribers who are set to "No Mail", type No Mail in the "Mail Status" filter box.

Mail Style: Check this box to report on whether subscribers are set to receive individual postings (Regular), Digest (Text, MIME or HTML) or Index (Text or HTML) versions of the list mail.

Mail Status: Check this box to report on whether subscribers are set to receive postings (Mail) or not (No Mail) from the list.

Header Style: Check this box to report on the header style that subscribers are set to receive for list postings. Possible header styles are:

  • Full: Normal headers for list postings. The "To" header contains the address of the list.
  • Subject: Same as "Full", but a subject-tag identifying the list is added to the subject header of all postings.
  • Short: Only the bare minimum headers ("To", "From", "Date" and "Subject") are included. This setting will break MIME messages, so it should only be used on lists that allow plain text only or for subscribers using mail clients that cannot handle MIME mail.
  • Dual: Same as "Full", but the main headers are repeated inside the message text as well. This is to accommodate some old mail software that did not process Internet mail properly and is mostly obsolete.
  • IETF: Headers are exactly the same as those sent by the original sender, with the possible exception of adding a "Sender" line (depending on the list configuration). This may break filters on some mail clients that rely on all list mail having certain mail headers.
  • Full (822): "Full" mail headers (like the default) except that the "To" header contains the recipient's email address instead of the list address.

Acknowledgements: Check this box to report on whether subscribers are set to receive a short acknowledgement message (Ack), a copy of their own posting (Repro) or neither (None) when they send to the list.

Restrictions: Check this box to report on what, if any, posting restrictions are in effect for the subscribers.

  • Post: Normal posting privileges according to the list's configuration.
  • No Post: The subscriber is not allowed to post to the list.
  • Editor: Posts bypass moderation on a list that is configured for moderation as policy.
  • Review: All posts are sent to a moderator for approval before being permitted on the list.

Conceal: Check this box to report on whether subscribers are listed in a "Review" of the list of subscribers. This setting is only of interest for lists where the list of subscribers is viewable by other list members or the general public. This setting is irrelevent for lists that are configured so that only the list owners can review the list of subscribers because list owners can always see the subscriber addresses regardless of the Conceal setting.

Renew: Check this box to report on whether subscribers are set to receive renewal notices on lists that are configured to request subscription renewals.

Topics: Check this box to report on which topics subscribers are set to receive on lists configured with topics.

Subscription Date: Check this box to report the date on which each subscription was registered.


Add Subscriber

To add a new subscriber to the list, simply type the user's email address followed by the full name. Then, choose whether or not to notify the user about the action and click on the "Add Subscriber" button. If you want to upload a list of subscribers from a text file, click on the "Bulk Operations" option.


Search for Subscribers

This case-insensitive parameter controls which subscribers are queried. The default is to display all subscribers. For example, if you have a particular subscriber or group of subscribers that you want to query that all contain Fran in the email address, type Fran into the box and click "Update". This will find subscribers such as:

fran@example.com
francie@example.com
sanfrancisco@example.com

Note that the interface automatically expands Fran to *Fran*. Wildcards are not otherwise supported.

If you are looking for subscribers at a particular domain name, you must prepend @ to the domain name. For instance, @example will find all subscribers at domain names such as example.com, example.net and example.org. In this case, the interface automatically expands @example to *@example*.


Report Format

This pulldown menu controls how to display the list of subscribers. You can choose to view the data in a table or download it as a CSV file. To change the report format, simply select the desired format in the menu and click "Update". Note that the same sort order and any filters also apply to the CSV download.


Change Subscriber Settings

Once the report has been generated, it becomes possible to change any subscriber's settings (except for the subscription date).

  • Select the subscriber by checking the box to the left of the subscriber name.
  • Make the change at the bottom of the column using the drop-down boxes.
  • Click the "Update" button to save your changes. If you would like your subscribers to receive an email notification that their options have been changed, check the "Send Email Notification" box. Otherwise, no notification will be sent.

To delete subscribers, check the boxes to the left of the subscriber names that you want to remove and then click the "Delete Subscribers" button.


Lines per Page

This parameter controls how many subscribers will be displayed on a single page of results. If you want to break the table into pages of 10 subscribers, for example, type 10 in the box and click "Update". The default is 50.



LISTSERV® is L-Soft's email list management software, originally developed by Eric Thomas in 1986. Visit the LISTSERV® Resource Center for more complete documentation.

LISTSERV® is a registered trademark. The trademark identifies LISTSERV® as a brand of email list management software developed by L-Soft.