Bulk Email Directly from Access

[Toxalot]

I have Access 2003 and WindowsXP

I have developed a custom desktop application in Access 2003 for a
client. It's pretty much all hand coded in VBA. Application front end
is an mde and client does not have full version of Access and uses
Access runtime. The desktop application has many admin functions.
There is also an online version with limited functions for display
purposes for users. The online version is developed in PHP/MySQL.

The data consists of company profiles. Client sells hard copy
directories of the profiles and subscriptions to the online version.
Client has always managed profile renewals and change requests via
snail mail, but now wants to manage this electronically.

I've been thinking about the best way to manage this. I was thinking
that it may be easier to handle the bulk emailing server-side through
PHP, but client just sent me a link to an Access 2007 Demo: Collect
data via e-mail

This appears to be something that the client would use and would
therefore require the full version of Access 2007. I have serious
concerns about upgrading the application to Access 2007 in the time
allotted. The deadline for the entire project is end of June. I
haven't worked on the code in a long time, and I haven't even begun to
learn Access 2007. I also have serious concerns with the client using
a full version of Access. Would the feature shown in the demo even
work with an mde (or 2007 equivalent)? Are my concerns unfounded?

However, the demo did get me to thinking about the feasibility of
trying to handle the profile renewals from the desktop version rather
than server-side. I looked into DoCmd.SendObject but there are too
many limitations. I found Microsoft Access Email FAQ at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/email.htm but much of the information
is outdated and many of the links don't work. Mabry sounded promising
but doesn't seem to exist anymore.

I also found this post http://groups.google.com/group/comp.databases.ms-access/msg/17acd019a0c8f801
which makes Winsock sound really simple. Unfortunately, there seems to
be at least one step missing. What is WinSock1? Is it a control or an
API or something else? I'm a quick learner, but I'm also a little
rusty. The email handling is a small portion of the overall project
and I am beginning to feel the time crunch.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Arvin Meyer]

You can upgrade to Access 2007 and still use Access 2003 MDE's without much
effort. You, of course will not be able to make changes within the MDE, or
save changes made back to the earlier MDE format from A2007. But you can
still use the data. Most of your code should also work just find. You really
just need to jump in and test everything.

For an email program, take a look at FMS's email utility:

http://www.fmsinc.com/MicrosoftAccess/Email/versionX6.html
--
Arvin Meyer, MCP, MVP
http://www.datastrat.com
http://www.accessmvp.com
http://access.mvps.org
Co-author: "Access Solutions", published by Wiley

 

[SmartbizAustralia]

For getting and reading emails - you might need to redemption if you
want to integrate with outlook.

There's a little work just hooking it all up depending on what kind of
email pop or exchange that the client uses etc.

What's better in alot of cases is having an asp.net / or PHP page that
writes to a table or file whilst also sending an email.
Like a built in redundancy.

The user users can fill in all the details and the data is saved.

Have done some apps that run through outlook emails and grab the
details out of them.

If you're not a coder, then the June deadline is coming really fast
for you to get a solution done.

Maybe, you're better off finding a hosting service that does thsi as
it is quite a common task.

Regards,
Tom Bizannes
Microsoft Access and Excel Developer
Sydney, Australia

 

[David-W-Fenton]

m:

Maybe, you're better off finding a hosting service that does thsi
as it is quite a common task.

I would definitely say an emailing service is much better for this,
as there are too many possibilities for losing Internet
access/getting your client listed in spam black holes, etc.