Having an Email Recipient Remotely Fill in a Filemaker Form

[Laurence Kerr]

Hello, I wanted to know what is the simplest way (if a way even exists) to send a filemaker page to someone through email and have them fill out missing forms remotely. After a cursory search, I see that there are several email pluggins for Filemaker, but I have little knowledge of the program, let alone with it's pluggins, and I don't know which ones (if any) could help me accomplish this.

As a backup, is there a plugin that will let me send out a filemaker page to someone through email, have them fill it out, and send it back to me through email so that I can manually update fields?

The important part is that I can send someone a page with some empty forms, and some filled forms (ones that i have data in already) that they can fill out the empty forms and get that information back to me as easily as possible (preferably without having to have them save it and attach it to an emai).

other information:

I am using Filemaker 7 Pro

I am using Win XP, although the guy I am researching this for may be using Vista or Win 7. A multi-os solution is preferable.

The database is pretty simple - it's a page with a few dozen entries, all of them are text-entry.

Once again, my experience with filemaker is very poor. I know how to use it about as well as I'd be able to use Excel.

I don't think the database is being shared at all at the moment, and the firewall for our building (and it's accompanying code against local servers) would probably prevent me from hosting it locally. Is there some remote server i could use to host it?

Edited November 19, 2009 by Guest

[bcooney]

Firstly, upgrade from FM7, it had several problems that were fixed in subsequent releases.

Afaik, there is no way to accomplish what you are asking. What comes to mind is:

1. Create a PDF form and use PC's PDF Manipulator to extract the data out of the form.

2. Build a php web interface to the FM database.

3. Send an excel template and have them email that back for import.

4. Use a FM hosting service and IWP to allow a guest to fill out a record.

Edited November 19, 2009 by Guest

[David McQueen]

One other method if the form structure remains the same:

Eg:

Name: My Name

Answer: My Answer

Address Street: My address

Have them fill out the email you send or an attached form and then use the headings

ie Name: Answer: Address:

as delimiters to parse out the email using calculated fields.

The idea is you would past the email contents or completed form into a global field, the calculated fields would do the parsing, then you would script an import into the database.

Another possible way to skin the cat -)

[ONS]

Is it possible to send a form and have it filled out in Filemaker Pro 9? I would like to do the same as Laurence.