Snapshot Viewer

[John Walker]

We're deciding what's the best format in which to email Access reports to our
customers. Would anybody know what are the chances that our customers
already have Snapshot Viewer installed on their machine? I don't know if it
comes standard with Windows? I will assume that everyone's on Windows 2000
or above.
Thanks,
John

 

[Jerry Whittle]

Not likely. Snapshot viewer doesn't come standard with any Windows OS or
Office package. You have to download and install it. Snapshot viewer is a
strange duck as only Access uses it. If I'm mistaken about what I just said,
hopefully someone will correct me. I just searched my Dell PC with Microsoft
XP and Office 2003 Professional and it isn't there.

I'd recommend sending them RTF files that can be read by Word, Wordpad, and
other programs. You have to keep it simple though as lines and anything else
fancy doesn't make it into the RTF file.

Then there's PDF files. Almost everyone has a copy of Acrobat reader on
their computer. You could go expensive with something like the full Adobe
package or a cheaper solution like PDF995 to create the pdf's from reports.
Also the next version of Office (12) is going to produce pdf's natively.

 

[John Walker]

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for the info. Yeah, please anybody, like Jerry asks, if you can
correct him that would be great because I kind need to know definitely that
Snapshot Viewer is not standard with Office. Thanks.

And while your confirming, if you also have knowledge that RTF, like Jerry
states, is not a good solution for complicated documents with lines and
special text alignment then please confirm this as well.

Because if I am certain about these two things then I just might go straigth
to using a PDF solution.

Thanks,
John

 

[Rick Brandt]

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for the info. Yeah, please anybody, like Jerry asks, if you can
correct him that would be great because I kind need to know
definitely that Snapshot Viewer is not standard with Office. Thanks.

It might not be installed with the default install, but it is on the Office
CD. I found it in OFFICE1.CAB file on both the Office 2000 Pro and the
Office XP Pro CD and in the A4561405.CAB file of Office 2003 Pro.

 

[John Spencer]

Snapshot Viewer is free, but it is not automatically installed. It can be
downloaded from Microsoft site.

RTF will not bring over lines and graphic items (such as check boxes). It
also does have problems with text (at times). If you are interested in
using a pdf solution, then check out
http://www.lebans.com/reporttopdf.htm

You can also use CutePDF and PDF995

 

[Bob Miller]

The viewer is available, free like Adobe reader, at:
http://tinyurl.com/apnjp
I also believe that snapshots can be opened if you have Acces
installed.
Snapshot is the way to go unless you have pdf creating software.

 

[John Walker]

Thanks everybody. I guess RTF is out, but maybe Snapshot Viewer is in. I
guess I need to estimate how inconveinent this will be for our customers. If
you took all computers in America running Microsoft Office Pro 2000 or
higher, and picked one at random, what are the chances that it already has
Snapshot Viewer installed? 10%?
What's the chances that it has Adobe installed? 90%?
Are these number way off?

Thanks.

 

[Rick Brandt]

Thanks everybody. I guess RTF is out, but maybe Snapshot Viewer is
in. I guess I need to estimate how inconveinent this will be for our
customers. If you took all computers in America running Microsoft
Office Pro 2000 or higher, and picked one at random, what are the
chances that it already has Snapshot Viewer installed? 10%?
What's the chances that it has Adobe installed? 90%?
Are these number way off?

So then send them a PDF file. What is the problem with that?

 

[John Walker]

Our customer already has the option to send these reports as a Snapshop
Viewer File, and we're their consultants so they would have to pay us to
figure out what would need to be done to get the output in PDF, so they'd
rather go with the Snapshot Viewer option just because it's cheaper but want
to know how convenient it would be for their customers.

Thanks.

 

[Rick Brandt]

Our customer already has the option to send these reports as a
Snapshop Viewer File, and we're their consultants so they would have
to pay us to figure out what would need to be done to get the output
in PDF, so they'd rather go with the Snapshot Viewer option just
because it's cheaper but want to know how convenient it would be for
their customers.

Well if they used a free PDF generator it would take extra time and effort, but
not any additional cost.

In a few special cases I wrote VBA routines that generated my own RTF files
using file i/o instead of the built in export stuff. It's not trivial, but for
a small number of reports it can be practical. You can have images, lines,
embedded fonts, etc.. What surprised me was that it is really fast and produces
much smaller files.

 

[John Walker]

So I'm getting the vibe that not too many people already have Snapshot Viewer

 

[Rick Brandt]

So I'm getting the vibe that not too many people already have
Snapshot Viewer on their systems and that if the goal is convenience
then I should go with PDF?

I always default to SNP files. My Email routines always examine the attachments
and if any have the SNP extension I include some text explaining the file type
and a link to the MS download for the viewer at the bottom of the message. That
has been sufficient 90% of the time. Your customers will have to decide how
they want to accomodate the 10% of recipients that either have problems or
complain about installing the viewer.

 

[John Spencer]

One advantage of PDF is that it is cross-platform. If some of the
recipients are using Apple products then they can read the PDF. I believe
that there is no SNP viewer available for the Macintosh platforms.

 

[John Walker]

I guess I'll tell our customer that if they want to use SNP then they will
have to pay me to include that text in the email message.

Thanks for the help,

John