Collecting Form Data with Outlook 98

[David Landy]

Attention all you Outlook 98 Gurus!

I'm setting up a system to survey people with questions, and store the
results in a database, using Outlook 98. The system is a kind of
workflow management system, so the contents of each questionnaire
change depending on the current state of the process.

I've set up a piece of VBA code in Access to generate Outlook 98
emails automatically using the Outlook 98 Object Model, with voting
buttons and text. So far so good!

The problem is this: I also want users to fill in some text boxes or
drop-down boxes, as well as being able to vote (or click some other
button on the form) to submit their response.

I've considered using Outlook Forms, but you can't generate these
on-the-fly through automation, so that's no good.

I've tried using an HTML Form in the email body, but how do you submit
the form? (Outlook doesn't include the original message when
submitting a vote.)

Any suggestions/solutions welcome!

David.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

You can use a GET but not a POST to submit the results of the HTML form to a
web server. Otherwise, you can parse the text of the incoming messages to
read that data out of HTMLBody.

 

[David Landy]

Thanks, Sue.

You can use a GET but not a POST to submit the results of the HTML form to a
web server.

OK, great, that works fine. I've got an ASP that receives the post and
generates an email back to the originator with the replies. A bit of a
round trip, but it works!

Otherwise, you can parse the text of the incoming messages to
read that data out of HTMLBody.

How could I collect the replies with the HTML fields embedded? If the
users click "reply", they get the form elements included in their
reply but they are not editable and appear to be in some kind of
"design mode"?

Thanks again for your help.

David

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

HTMLBody contains the complete tagged HTML content of the message. You'd
have to parse it either with the IE document model or by reading the raw
text. Not an easy task in either case.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers