Import from the web via an E-mail form

[Aegean Center]

Hello FileMakers,

I've been trolling through the posts and I haven't found exactly what I'm after. Although, I'm convinced this must be a pretty easy fix and I apologize if I've missed something that's already been covered.

I work at a small art school in Greece. We receive prospective student applications via an e-mail form on our web site. I have made a database to help us keep track of these applications, but I haven't found a way to get all of the info into FileMaker (5.5v2 on a Mac) easily. We don't have access to an always-on Internet connection here on our little island, so the web companion is out. And I've had difficulty getting comma- or tab-delimited text files to work since our applicants have to submit essays which often contain commas, tabs and carriage returns.

I have also looked at a plugin which turns FileMaker into a de facto e-mail client, but once the e-mail with the application is into FileMaker I'm still left with a big text field that is hard to split up into discrete fields.

I'm a newbie and maybe I'm missing something obvious. This seems like it would be a pretty common and simple task for the pros...

Thanks very much!

Chris

[LiveOak]

There is no way to get around the need to break out FM data from a single email field. It can, however, be made easier by controlling the way the web form creates the email. The web side needs to format the form to make it easy to identify where the break between fields occurs. A format such as:

*Name*:

*Address*:

*City*:

etc.

makes it easier to identify were each field begins by using a label that cannot be confused with text the user submits or with other labels. For instance, using "Name" alone could match many places in the text and cause the parse to fail. Then you can use text functions to breakout the data. The text functions will still be somewhat complex (I'm writing one right now), but they work well.

NameField (calculation, text) =

Middle(EmailBody, Position(Body, "*Name*:", 1, 1), Position(Body, "

[Aegean Center]

Thank you very much, bd (or LiveOak, I'm not sure which is the correct handle. I'm a "stranger" after all).

With your helpful advice I have parsed everything out successfully. So now if anybody is ready to come study fine art on a little island in the Aegean Sea, your application will sail smoothly into our database.

Thanks again.

Chris (at the Aegean Center on Paros)

[BertBoye]

I tried you example that you did but my one always return, *Name*: Bill

Do you have a solution to this???