HTML mail

[ddreese]

My client wants to be able to send an mass html e-mail to mimmic the look of a mailed letter. Basically all it involves is placing their logo at the top on the right hand side. A simple table would do fine.

I know HTML well enough to be able to code this by hand (or so I thought), so I just modified the body field in the SendMail script to be

"HTML code here" & message_body & "END HTML code"

When it gets to outlook, it just copies the text over as if it wasn't HTML at all. This is the first time I've tried such a thing, so I thought I'd ask for some quick help

[Ted S]

I'm about 99% sure this is not possible with native FileMaker and Outlook.

Take a look at any of the 3rd party SMTP plug-ins for FileMaker. I use SMTPit from CNS and it will do HTML emails and works very well for mass emails.

You will probably also find that Outlook wants you to confirm that it is okay to send for each and every message that is sent. 300 emails = pressing OK 300 times.

[ddreese]

Well I was just trying to test it on Outlook, my client is using entourage. I did check out smtpit yesterday, it looks like a great plugin, I advised my client to buy that. Thanks!

[Zardoz]

If you are comfortable adding the HTML tags yourself, then there is a way that you can generate HTML-formatted email from FileMaker using Outlook. The basic technique is to use FileMaker to create a .htm file and then specify in the SendMail script step that this file be attached to your email. Outlook will then render this file in the body of the message, including tables, style sheets, hyperlinked text, etc. I've described this technique in the Tips & Tricks forum in a thread called "Sending HTML-formatted email in Outlook."

Edited July 16, 2005 by Guest

[Sanjai]

Hi,

The technique which Zardoz has mentioned above works really well. I have tried it. I have rendered an entire FileMaker Pro layout into html manually and then I am distributing this html dynamically by first doing an export to an htm file and then showing the web page in outlook.

Thanks Zardoz

[iflurker]

The approach I've used is to export into XML with an XSLT stylesheet converting it to HTML on the disk, then attach it to the document much like Zardoz's method. This is more elegant in the sense that you don't need to add any HTML tags inside the Filemaker database itself, and it's more powerful when you want to export a table of data with summary fields etc. With XSLT I was able to do cool stuff like have alternating white/gray rows, just like you can do in Filemaker list view. (I used an xslt if command with "position() mod 2", if anyone's curious.)

A disadvantage/advantage is that you need to learn XSLT, a programming language for data conversion. It's not so tricky, though: it only took me a few hours to learn it well enough to do what I wanted with it.

[Calantha]

Hello,

I was wondering about this earlier because all of our form letters/newsletters are HTML based and thought I had to buy a plug-in.

I've tried out your method, Zardoz, but I have further questions.

If the attached file is a an HTML file is it somehow possible that the name field would be represented after the "Dear," section in the HTML file?

Is this something that would be available if you were actually using a plug-in?

Secondly, a line appears above the HTML body, is there any way to get rid of this?

Overall, I'm wondering if it is still an advantage to purchase the plugin if I plan on doing mass newsletter mailings in HTML format, and wish to automate mailings with the individuals first and last name within the email body.

Thanks.

[Zardoz]

Other than manually deleting it, I haven't figured out a way to delete the bar above the HTML body. If anyone figures out a way to do this automatically, please advise. It has actually ended up being a handy divider in many instances between the automatically generated text and any manual comments that I may need to add.

I have used this technique to send one email to several recipients at once. I haven't tried it to send a separate mailing to each recipient individually. But I'm sure this is possible by adding a loop in your script to cycle through the recipients, if the recipients are stored in your database. If your recipients are stored in the database, then it should also then be fairly simple to construct a personalized salutation (e.g., "Dear " & RecipientName) as part of a calculation in your script.