Hyperlinks on Forms for email address

[IanL]

I have a textbox on a form that is linked to a hyperlink field.

The field is used to input email addresses. However the hyperlinks don't
work because access prefixes them with http:/ (instead of mailto.

I can not find anywhere in the field or the text box to set this property.
So that access knows they are email addresses.

Please Help!

 

[Allen Browne]

You can right-click the address, and manually fix it by changing the
hyperlink part so it has the "mailto:" prefix.

Realistically, that proves to be a very inefficient approach. I much prefer
to use a Text field, which avoids the problem and also saves users getting
confused between whether they changed the display address or the actual
address or both.

You can still make it look and behave like a hyperlink, either with
FollowHyperlink and adding the mailto prefix, or more simply with
SendObject.

Tony Toews has a bunch of other information on email from Access:
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/email.htm

 

[IanL]

Thanks for your response Allen. This is useful although I find it hard to
believe there is not a more direct way to do this. Email addresses are a
pretty common use of hyperlinks! In fact I am amazed that access can't
reconise the difference between an email address and a web address
automatically.

The manual approach is definately unworkable. The database will have several
thousand entries, posted by many different users who won't all have the
skills to edit this manually.

If all else fails I will try the SendObject or FollowHyperlink methods...
but I hope I can find a simpler way to fix this.

Regards,

Ian

 

[John D]

Here I am 2 months later looking for a way to do the exact same thing and
having the same thought - why doesn't access just "take care" of this
problem? That is, why doesn't access allow a data type for email addresses
and another for hyperlinks to html pages? Way too many people are creating
access db's who don't have programming skills, and they should simply be able
to say "make this field and email address, please".