Alan:
Yes, there is a way. But have you explored, and rejected, storing contacts
in Outlook and creating Outlook Distribution Lists?
If you really need to store your contacts in Access, then you could use VBA
code in your Access database to start Outlook and send and an email (or
Mailitem as Outlook calls it). Your VBA code would need to open a Recordset
object on your query and loop through the recordset pulling out the email
addresses.
The process of starting one application (Outlook) from another (Access) is
called Automation. (Both applications need to support Automation, which
Outlook and Access do.) It can be a bit tricky.
You will bump into a number of practical problems. For example, what happens
when many of your Access records store invalid or out-of-date email
addresses? If email addresses are invalid, Outlook won't be able to send to
them. If the email addresses are out-of-date, you'll get many "Undelivered"
replies. You'll need to update your contacts efficiently. Keeping contacts
up-to-date is an issue wherever the contact data is stored. But you may tire
of the problems if it's difficult getting accurate information. This is why
I suggest you think about Outlook Contacts and Distribution Lists.
I can think of two books that contain information about Outlook Automation:
Access Cookbook
by Getz, Litwin and Baron
Microsoft Outlook Programming
by Sue Mosher
Browse these books in a bookstore to see if they also cover looping through
a recordset. (I expect the Access Cookbook will but I can't remember
offhand.)
There are Microsoft Newsgroups dedicated to Outlook, which would better
answer specific Outlook questions.
Regards
Geoff
