email question ???

[Yeti]

What if I would email an invoice made in Filemaker to a client who doesn't have Filemaker ?

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Yeti

[JW]

Do you want to email the invoice as attachment ?

[Yeti]

Yes, most of the time this will be the case.

Would this be a problem or not?

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Yeti

[john.daly]

If your client hasn't got Filemaker then they won't be able ot open an fp5 file.

The only way I know of sending email from Filemaker is to copy the whole page in preview mode and then to paste it as a jpeg into your email client. You can use a script to do all of it except the pasting:.

Enter Preview Mode[]

Copy [select]

Send Mail [invoice]

If you have an email address field then you can Specify this together with the subject (Invoice) and then when your email client opens you just need to select Edit and Paste and the invoice will will be pasted in as a jpeg picture.

Hope this helps.

[Vaughan]

Email the text of the record, or create a calculation field that builds all of the desired text for you. Then e-mail that to the client.

Emailing attachment images is going to be a nightmare, people won't know what to do with them etc. Not to mention size...

[Yeti]

Why is this such a difficult thing ?

Email is such an integrated part of any business these days. We wouldn't know what to do without it....

Would it be possible to save an invoice as a word document and then mail it?

Or am I just being difficult here :-(

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Yeti

[signal]

You could use one of the many PDFWriters to "Print " a pdf and attach that. They are smaller than jpegs but infinitely more clear since the text is stored as vector. Since Acrobat Reader is free to download or already on most machines, we use it extensively. ALso, it would capture the formating of your FM file.

[Vaughan]

John

Email is text-only. You cannot paste an image or any other binary file into an email message. Mail clients like Netscape and Outlook take the liberty of displaying attachments "in-line" in the mail message, but they are still attachments.

Yes you could use PDf writers etc to create a pdf file but scripting the whole process is not going to be easy. And I thibnk that the origianl poster wanted a push-button autmated solution.

So just posting the text of the invoice seems like a good solution to me. Not that I would e-mail invoices anyway, a piece of paper is more "legally" binding.

[john.daly]

Yes, Iagree!! Perhaps someone out there is listening and this will somehow be included in the next upgrade of Filemaker.

I don't totally however agree with Vaughan's comments. I wasn't suggesting attaching an image file but pasting it into the email. A jpeg picture will usually show directly in the email client and is typically about 20kB for a single sheet or invoice with a business heading. Hardly a big deal by today's standards. A similar Word document is almost 60kB. Of course a simple text email is going to be much less but that is excludes any graphics of your headed paper.

[john.daly]

Just to clarify - email is text only if that is the option you select but I personally have mine set to send html which is not text only and allows you to paste pictures into the page! It does not show either as an attachment on either sending or receiving. Certainly in the UK invoices, receipts etc that are faxed or emailed is just as legally binding as one that is posted and at least you have proof that you sent it! Many phone companies, banks and e-commerce companies no longer produce the paper format. Even the tax people accept your tax return electronically over the internet.

[Yeti]

Well, thanks you all for the replies.

I conclude that this is a complex thing to accomplish...I'm really dissapointed.

I hope people at the Filemaker Corporation read this forum often and take note of these discussions.

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Yeti

[Pengo]

What I would do to solve your problem...

A scripts starts on your server.

The sript generates a pdf document and sends an email to your client, in the email is just the link to the pdf document that is stored on your server..

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