I have been charged with a project. It sounded fairly simple at fisrt but it seems to be getting more difficult by the minute.

I'm completely new to databases. What I need to do is make a contact DB in which you can sort by different criteria. Sounds simple so far. In fact, I think there is a template built right in. Here's my problem: I need to be able to sort by different criteria and then be able to send mass emails to the resulting list of clients. ALSO, I need to be able to print mailing labels the same way.

I first looked into this with Access but found there was no easy way to do this. someone told me Filemaker can do it but I'm finding little evidence in these forums or elsewhere. Am I missing something?

I'm NOT a person who does well righting codes or scripts.

I've downloaded the trial version of FM7 and I'm ready to purchase it if I can be confident that it will do what I want.

I hope I've explained myself well enough.

Thanks for your help!

Mailing labels, and sorting are easy. As far as email, I have never tried that.

Dave

You'll have to write a script to do the email (filemaker has a Send Email script step). Since you're on Windows, beware that Outlook doesn't like being called to send email from the outside.

There are a couple of SMPT plugin for filemaker that would do the trick for you.

Check www.filemaker.com/plugins

Hi Dave:

This certainly can be done with FileMaker. Heck, it can be done with outlook

Anyways, Use the templates you saw to get started. Labels are done simply with a label layout which you can create using the new layout wizard. E-mail is done using a plug-in. I suggest SMTPit , it works really good. Sorry to say it, but you will learn the basics of scripting. You must to make it work. Unless you wanna pay somebody But the guides make it easy!

Thanks for the helpful answers. I guess I forgot one thing that may be important though. I'm doing the projuect on a PC but it will ultimately be used on a MAC. Is this going to present a problem?

Also, on the labels, can you print a bunch at once or do you have to do one at a time?

Thanks again!

FM is cross-platform, no problem. Yes, you can print out a bunch of labels (usually a sheet) at a time.