A letter every year

Send the same letter on the same day every year, for a birthday, an anniversary or a holiday. Each year is a letter of its own, paid at once.

Updated October 23, 20266 minutes to read

A letter can go out on the same day every year: a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas Eve. You write it once and choose how many years. Every year becomes a letter of its own, waiting for its day, and you can change the words of each one later.

It works for email letters and for paper letters.

Set up a letter that repeats

Write the letter
Open the composer and add the recipients, a subject and your text as usual. For a paper letter, use the paper composer.
Pick the day
Under the delivery date on the slip, the days your letter can be for are one tap away. The birthdays and anniversaries of your recipients, taken from the Days to remember of their contacts, show as chips, the nearest first; past three, the rest wait behind more. The fixed days of the year, New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Midsummer, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, wait behind A day of the year. One tap sets the delivery date, the look of the letter, the texts to start from and the name of the series. A second tap on the chosen chip takes it off again. You can still pick any day in the date picker.
Switch on Repeat every year
Below the days, turn on Repeat every year. The switch needs a day: without one the slip says Choose a day first: a letter that repeats needs one.
Choose how many years
Use How many years to set the number of years. An email letter can repeat for 2 to 20 years, a paper letter for 2 years up to 5 years. The last year can never lie further ahead than a letter may wait: 100 years for an email letter. The slip sums it up, for example 5 letters, every 14 May from 2027 to 2031.
Say what it is for
Under What it is for, choose Birthday, Anniversary, Holiday or Something else. Then give it a Name of the occasion, such as "Emma’s birthday". Only you see the name, on the card of this letter, so you find it again.
Review and send
The review shows a row Repeat every year with the letters and the years, for example 5 letters, 2027 to 2031, and the credits the years cost together. Confirm, and every year is scheduled at once.

A paper letter is posted on the day you choose and arrives some days later. For a birthday, pick a day the week before.

The age and the year in the text

While Repeat every year is on, the toolbar of the composer has two more buttons. The year puts {year} in the text, and Their age puts {age} in it. Each year of the letter gets them filled in with its own numbers: "You turn {age} today" reads "You turn 41 today" in the first year and "You turn 42 today" in the next.

Their age is shown only when the day comes from a contact whose year is known, such as a birthday with the year of birth. Without that year, {year} is still filled in and {age} stays as you wrote it.

What it costs

Every year is a letter of its own, and every year is paid when you send it.

An email letter: Each year is priced like a single letter that waits until its day: 1 credit, plus 1 credit for every started 5 years it waits beyond the first 5 years, counted from the day you buy it. So the later years of a long series cost a little more than the first ones. The composer shows the whole price before you confirm. Credits come in the usual packs, see Buy credits.
A paper letter: The price of the paper letter, once for every year. See What a paper letter costs in credits.

A letter that repeats is always a paid letter. It never uses one of the month's free letters
It carries no files. Send files with a single letter instead
It cannot be a public letter in the gallery. Share one year of it instead
If your wallet has too few credits, the composer offers Buy credits before anything is charged

Every year is a letter of its own

Each year is an ordinary letter with its own date. An email letter sends its own notice with its own private link and access code to every recipient, on its day, as described in What your recipient sees. A paper letter is printed and posted on its day.

In Manage Letters, every year shows up in the list of letters, marked Every year with its year. You can open and change a single year there like any other paid letter.

See every year

After sending, the composer offers See every year. It opens the page of the letter, with every year as a row and its status, and the next one marked Next to go. You find the page again under Manage Letters, on the tab Every year, which lists all your letters that repeat.

Change the words: Opens the edit page of that one year. A year can be changed until it goes out: an email letter while it waits, a paper letter until 1 hour before it is posted. See Edit, reschedule or delete an email letter.
Use for every year: Copies the subject, the text and the theme of one year to all the other years that are still waiting. Years already sent stay as they are.
Add more years: Adds years after the last one. The new years start with the words of the last year. Choose how many under How many more. They are paid at once, each year priced like a letter that waits until its day (the later the year, the more it can cost), and if the wallet is short the dialog offers Buy credits first.
Stop: Deletes every year that has not gone out yet and gives their credits back to your wallet. The dialog says how many years and credits that is before you press Stop and refund. Years already sent stay as they are.

Reminders

You hear from us in the bell and by email, as long as Your letters is switched on under Notifications:

Two weeks before each year goes out, to ask whether the words are still right. There is still time to change them
When the last year has gone out, with the offer to add more years

More about the bell and the email switches is in Notifications.

Good to know

A letter on 29 February goes out on 28 February in the years that have no 29 February
Their age needs the year of birth on the contact. Add it under Days to remember, see Days to remember on a contact
Stop gives back the credits of the years not sent yet only. A year that has gone out is not refunded
An email letter goes out at the same time of day every year, on the clock of the time zone you wrote it in