emailing a report or Word mail merge

[rebeccax]

Hey there! I've been thumbing around with this problem for so long I have
completely lost the plot. Yes, I know this is an FAQ but I'd appreciate some
help on the architechture as well as the coding of this. I have an Access DB
that has a table of new clients. Each client get a welcome letter emailed to
them, and their email addys are housed in the table of new clients. It's a
one page letter.

What I want is for each client to get their one page letter in the body of
an email, not as an attachment. I can think of maybe half a dozen ways to do
this. But if this were your project, would you execute it from Access, Word,
or Outlook? Yes, this is an all Microsoft environment. The user who
performs this task will be logged into the group mailbox and that email
account alone, so the correct return address will be the default setting.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Wayne-I-M]

Hi check this out

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/email.htm

 

[Mark Andrews]

Simple way is to hard code the building of the body of the email and then
send it using your favorite email program.
Have code loop thru the recordset of clients.

Beter way is to build an email template system where you can build re-usable
email templates and then use them to send customized
emails. Use HTML formatted emails if you want things to look really good,
however more difficult to build the template.
Save history of emails sent out etc...

or use a service that does this for you like constant contact. More
benefits such as bounce rates etc....

Execute from Access (since that's where the client data and email live).
or export from access and use service.

Here's one I built:
http://www.rptsoftware.com/products/email/

Be warned that large amounts of emailing can cause issues with your isp
etc....

HTH,
Mark Andrews
RPT Software
http://www.rptsoftware.com
http://www.donationmanagementsoftware.com

 

[david]

I would do it in Access, because Access is my standard
platform, and my Access database already has a lot of
forms and code.

I guess my second choice would be Word, to make it
easier for the users to maintain, and my third choice
would be Outlook, because relatively few people have
much VBA in Outlook.

But if I was going to do it in Word, I would wonder
why I was bothering with a database at all. I'd probably
put the database into Excel if I was just going to use it
only as source for a mail merge.

(david)

 

[rebeccax]

Mark,

That is fly! Thanks for the inspiration.

~Rebecca