Getting data from email into an Access database

[Anonymous]

I'm using an Access database in my Internet retail sales business. When we
make a sale, our shopping cart software sends us an email with all the
relevant information (except credit card info, of course; that's handled by
secure software). We print the email, open the database and go to a form
where we type in the data: the name, address, email and phone number of the
person who ordered and the items ordered. I'm wondering if there's a way,
without getting deep into VBA programming, to get Access to "read" the email
and extract the relevant information for the database. I suspect this would
be pretty hard to do, especially because the data goes to more than one
table (one for customer information and another for order information), but
I wondered if I'm overlooking a reasonable solution.

 

[Bogdan Zamfir]

Hi,

Yes, this can be done, but with VBA.
You can update as many tables as you need.
As long as the mail as automatically generated, there is possible to extract
data required to update Access tables

If you need more info or help on this issue, you can contact me directly,
and I'll be glad to help you.

Regards,
Bogdan Zamfir
_________________________

Independent consultant

 

[Tony Toews]

I'm using an Access database in my Internet retail sales business. When we
make a sale, our shopping cart software sends us an email with all the
relevant information (except credit card info, of course; that's handled by
secure software). We print the email, open the database and go to a form
where we type in the data: the name, address, email and phone number of the
person who ordered and the items ordered. I'm wondering if there's a way,
without getting deep into VBA programming, to get Access to "read" the email
and extract the relevant information for the database. I suspect this would
be pretty hard to do, especially because the data goes to more than one
table (one for customer information and another for order information), but
I wondered if I'm overlooking a reasonable solution.

Depends on your definition of reasonable. <smile> You will need to
use VBA code.

See the section Reading data from website emails into Access
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/email.htm

Tony

--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

 

[John Vinson]

I'm wondering if there's a way,
without getting deep into VBA programming, to get Access to "read" the email
and extract the relevant information for the database.

It's not going to be easy. The text of an EMail message is one
undifferentiated block of text. Unless you have code on your website
which constructs the message in a firmly defined format, with "tags"
such as LastName: and FirstName:, preferably in predictable order, it
can be a real chore parsing the needed information.

If you do have such a structure, you'll need to write VBA to do that
parsing. It's not impossible but it's not trivial either.