Trying to create e-mail script step

[garrettks]

I want to use Filemaker to send out an e-mail using Eudora. I have figured out how to put in the To and Subject lines. Problem is I want to personalize the body of the e-mail I send out to each user, I want to pull info (username, state, and other info) from fields in the database to the body of each e-mail which is sent out. I can type the body of the e-mail in the script step box but I am not sure how to customize. I have tried Dear <<Username>>, which is the name of my particular field. I have also tried quotes around the user name, and about everything else you can think of. Then I thought it might be better to create a new layout with the letter then somehow pull it into the e-mail message. Didn

[BobWeaver]

You need to use a field name for the body instead of entering the actual body text. Create a calc field called Body something like this:

Body = "Dear"& NameField & "How would you like to be the first person in" & CityNameField & "to be driving a brand new Mercedes, yada etc..."

and then use Body as the body text field.

[garrettks]

Thanks for the helpful information... My next problem... The body of my text is 6200 characters and it appears I can only put up to 253 characters in the calculation field. -( Any ideas what I can do now?

Garrett

[BobWeaver]

Put the main text of the body into a global text field, and then reference that in your calculation. This will be much easier to edit and maintain too.

[garrettks]

Bob or someone..

Can you provide further explanation about the global text field and how I would customize that and use it for my personalized body of my e-mail. I have created the global field but cannot figure out how to reference it or customize it in my body of my e-mail msg.

Thanks a million!

Garrett

[BobWeaver]

You may need more than one global field depending how many other name and address fields are inserted.

If your global fields are called gBody1, gBody2, gBody3 etc., then it is set up as in this example:

gBody1 = "Dear"

gBody2 = "How would you like to be the first person on"

gBody3 = "to be the proud owner of a brand new skateboard? Blah blah...."

and then the calculated field that you use for the body in the send mail step would be:

Body = gBody1 & FirstName & LastName & gBody2 & StreetAddress & gBody3

Alternately, you can put all the text in one global field and insert merge field type markers, and then use the Substitute function to replace them, like so:

gBody = "Dear <<FirstName>> <<LastName>>, How would you like to be the first person on <<StreetAddress>> to be the proud owner of a brand new skateboard?...."

Then set your calculated body field to:

Body = Substitute(Substitute(Substitute(gBody,

"<<FirstName>>",FirstName),

"<<LastName>>",LastName),

"<<StreetAddress>>",StreetAddress)

[ May 14, 2001: Message edited by: BobWeaver ]