- Logging in
- Sending a message
- Cancelling a scheduled message
- Viewing sent messages
- Creating a new list
- Logging out
- Joining a list
- Leaving a list
- Giving feedback

Logging in

To log in to your account:

• Go to www.churchtext.com;
• Enter your username and password;
• Click on the "Log in" button.

Sending a message

To send a message:

• Log in to your account. You will see the following page:

• If you are in another page, click on "Send a message" in the sidebar:

• Type your message in the message box. The message is automatically seeded with name of your organisation (in this example, "Sample Parish:"), but you can overwrite this if necessary.

• Mobile numbers can be entered manually in the number box, separated by a comma. If you are a UK user, British mobile phone numbers can be entered in all common formats, for example: 07777 123456, (07777) 123456, 07777 – 123456, etc. All other numbers should be entered in international format; for example, the Irish number 087 1234567 should be entered as 353871234567.

• To send to distribution lists, simply tick the relevant boxes from the list.
  
  The number of subscribers in each list is shown in brackets. Note that duplicate numbers are only sent once, even if they are in several selected lists, or have been manually input.

• To schedule a message for a later time, scroll down to select the desired time and date in the scroll boxes. If no time is selected, the message will be sent immediately.

• Click on the "Preview Before Sending" button.

• In the Preview page, you can click to send (or schedule) the message, or click to return to the previous page to make changes:

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Cancelling a scheduled message

To cancel a message that you have scheduled:

• Click on "Scheduled messages" in the sidebar. This will show a list of all message you have scheduled:

• To cancel a message, just click on the "Cancel" button.

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Viewing sent messages

To view messages that have already been sent:

• Click on "View sent messages" in the sidebar. This will show a list of all message you have sent:

• Unwanted messages can be deleted using the "Delete" button.
• To send a similar message to one already sent, just highlight the text and cut (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) into the message box in the "Send a message page".

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Creating a new list

To create a new list:

• Click on "Manage lists" in the sidebar. This will show you the existing lists:

• Click on the "Create Lists" button to create a new list.

Lists can be:

• Private – these lists can only be sent a message by you.
• Non-private – can also be sent messages by other selected parts of your church, e.g. your diocese, or national organisation.
• Enabled for short-code sign-up – parishioners in UK can join this list by texting the appropriate code (e.g. "churchtext zzzz421 main" in the example above), to 82280. Additional countries will be added to our service in the near future.
• Disabled for short-code sign-up – these lists are closed to new direct sign-up, but members can still un-subscribe from the list; in the example above, one would un-subscribe by sending "churchtext zzzz421 main stop" to 82280.

You can change these settings, or delete a list, using the buttons on the "Manage lists" page. Note that for most users, the list called "main" cannot be edited or deleted.

When a new list is created, it is immediately available. This means, for example, that once you create a new list for your choir, you can immediately inform parishioners of the short code to join that list – in this case texting "churchtext zzzz421 choir" to 82280. You can create as many lists as you want, up to eight alpha-numeric characters in length.

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Logging out

When you are finished using ChurchText, click on "Log out" in the sidebar, then close the browser window. It is particularly important to do this if using a publicly-accessible computer.

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Joining a list

To join a list, the parishioner simply texts the corresponding code to 82280 (UK only – other countries to follow). In the example above, to join the "main" list of "Sample Parish", parishioners would text "churchtext zzzz421 main" to 82280. They would then receive a text to confirm that they have joined, and informing them how to leave the list.

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Leaving a list

Similar to joining a list, but with the addition of the word "stop". In the example above, parishioners would text "churchtext zzzz421 main stop" to 82280.

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Giving feedback

To help improve the ChurchText service, we would appreciate your suggestions and any feedback you can give, positive or negative, via email at

Thank You!