trying to create bulk letter & email module

[mahesh]

i am setting up a contact, reservations, and donations database for a local theater. i am stuck on the letter/email part of this. mass letters/emails will need to be sent based on various search criteria (group, name of last show, etc.). doing the search to create a found set is not the problem. with that found set, i do not know the best way to go about the letter database. i know how to simply create the letter with the found set, but i need that letter to have other custom fields inline with the body of the letter so the letter seems personalized. i also need the letter date field to automatically enter itself into the main contact database in a field that tracks all communications to that contact. i am assuming the letter database will need to be its own file. but do i need to create a new file for each mass letter i send out? and each mass email? if not, how do i change the body of the letter/email within the same file? i know i can do different layouts, but then how do i know which layout someone actually got later on down the road? i have looked into ready-made solutions such as dbMailerPro, directMAIL, and fmMailMerge. all of these have cool features, but none give me everything i want. the closest was fmMailMerge. i like that it copies the date of the letter into the contact database into a field named "last contact", although i want it to track ALL letter dates in that field. i really like most of its features, except there is no letter feature - it is only for email and fax.

another more simple question... if i set up a field in the reservations database to track the "show name", so that eventually and 1 contact may have several show names attached to their name, how do i get all of the "show name" field from all of the records associated with that contact into a letter or email for personalization?

any ideas? many many thanks in advance.

[HOnza]

I suggest you use some special keywords in your letter body, and then replace them with real data using the Substitute function.

For example, to include date in your letter, you can use this letter text:

This letter was sent on [Date].

You can then replace the [Date] symbol using the following calculation:

Substitute(letterbody, "[Date]", DateToText(Status(CurrentDate)))

The only drawback of this approach is that your text wil lose any formatting. But that should not matter as you should not use formatted text for e-mail anyway.

HOnza