email to database?

[superlukeyboy]

whenever anyone sends me an order off my site i get this email:

--------- FORM DATA STARTS HERE ---------

<First Name>

Potato

<Last Name>

Head

<Email>

[email protected]

<Email Confirmed>

[email protected]

<Address>

Potato House

Highland Road

Northburog

Shiringhamshire

IG7 4FX

Twoodeland

<Refered By>

friend

<Friend's Email>

[email protected]

<DVD>

Saving Private Ryan

<Gift>

portabledvd

<Comments>

make it snappy!

<Terms>

on

<Mobile/Phone Number>

07548 531468

---------- FORM DATA ENDS HERE ----------

Now the email is sent via a free email service so unfortunately i can't edit how it appears. wot i'm wondering is if i can get it so that when i open my database it will run a script that will open my mail application, (in this case it is actually the Mac OS X Jaguar application "Mail") read through the order emails which will always have the subject, "New Order" and import all the data present into the correct fields in a new record for each email. can i do this? if so how? i have encolsed my databases.

by the way, in the order database the "referred by" field should be the email address of the person who referred them.

Version: v6.x

Platform: Mac OS X Jaguar

[Fenton]

Yes, it's possible. But, yes, it's some work. There are 2 different things you want to do. One is to get the emails into FileMaker. Two is to parse the text into Fields (unless you want to parse it outside Filemaker, in which case you know more than I do, so go for it :-)

There is a shareware Filemaker soluton, eMessage Archiver, which can import from about any email client. That's one way to go. You could do the AppleScript yourself, but he's done quite a job.

Personally however I would get the FileMaker "POP3it" plug-in. Then you can receive the emails directly into a FileMaker field. Use a dedicated email account just for this, so these forms aren't mixed up with your other mail.

Then you just need to parse out the fields. This looks to be not too hard, as each entry is tagged, and you know what the tags are, and in which order. Use the Position and Middle functions. Ask if you need more help.

The English addresses are a bit dodgy, but I expect you're used to that.