send email with formatting

July 12, 200223 yr

I'd like to use the send email script command, but in the body of the email, I'd like part of the text to be bold, and part of the text to be standard (not bold). Is there any way to do that?

July 13, 200223 yr

I've never bothered to look at how this is done, but since email is really text only, I suspect it uses tags resolved by the browser. Take a look at an email body saved as pure text (don't look with a browser, a system default small text editor would work) and see what tags enclose the text for say bold. Use these same tags to enclose the text to be bolded.

-bd

July 13, 200223 yr

Author

I tried to view a message with various formatting in simpletext, but still could not see the tags. What text

editor do you suggest I use? I am on a mac.

July 13, 200223 yr

A little experimentation and I found that the HTML version of the email is sent as an attached file which is stripped by the browser and used for display or, in the case of my experiment which received with a FM plug-in, saved as a separate html file. I got nothing the first time, because I sent the message in both plain text and html. The second test I sent only html and the email plug-in had a message in the email body to look for a htm file on the hard drive.

I SENT (WITH APPROPRIATE FORMATTING):

This is plain text

This is bold text

This is underlined text

This is italics

This is in red

This is bold and in red and underlined

AND I RECEIVED:

<html>

This is plain  text

This is bold text

This is underlined text

This is italics

This is in red

This is bold and in red and underlined

</html>

Hope this helps, it looks like using html tags is what you need. What will be received is always a function of the email program rendering the html.

-bd

July 15, 200223 yr

I had a weird issue with text bolding and email on the Mac and Eudora (if I remember correctly PCs didn't have the issue). A staff member decided to bold sections of a FM 5.0 generated email before sending. On the sent email the URL hyperlink was broken. I don't know if it impacts you.

July 17, 200223 yr

Author

Thanks for all your efforts, but I am still not getting bold text to output to my mail program.

I am using a mac (v 9.2) with Outlook Express. I tried using your html tag suggestion both in the send e-mail command and the open URL command (using a mailto:). I could not get the bolding to appear in Outlook Express in both cases.

January 2, 200322 yr

I have the same problem with FMP 5 and Outlook. I'm not trying for bold, just carriage returns. I want each part of the email to be on a different line.

I have gone through the same process as you: Using html tags both in the send email command and the open URL command and both failed.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

January 2, 200322 yr

Rather than the tag have you tried the tag?

Which platform are you on?

January 2, 200322 yr

I didn't read the whole thread.... but perhaps I can help.

If you want to do html formatting in an email, you can build the html normally, but you can't paste it into an e-mail client unless it supports complex html.

For outlook/entourage, there is an AppleScript available called "Send Complex HTML".

Basically you set up your message with subject and recipient, then activate the send complex html script, which asks you for an html file. It will then send the message immediately (or save in outbox) with the html formatting. You do not have a chance to edit it in outlook/entourage.