Faxing from Access 97 - the easiest way?

[DavidMark]

Hi guys,
I have a requirement to fax an Access 97 form, any ideas on the easiest way to go about it? Is there any built-in function to do it?

Thanks in advance

Dave

 

[DavidMark]

Sorry, forgot to mention. I have checked out the SendObject method which doesn't seem to be able to handle boxes, lines and other such formatting. ideally I need to be able to fax an exact copy of what I have on the form. Any ideas?

Dave

 

[lameid]

My note 3 below shows how to send to a snapshot which may be the crux of your problem.
In a corporate environment, my initial testing of GFI faxmaker (

http://www.gfisoftware.com/)

shows some promise for portrait report. I had several issues setting it up but seemed to work once I bothered tech support and got answers (the documentation and setup routine for NT 4.0 Exchange 5.5 leaves something to be desired). I think I'm out of the trial period and it quit working for me, I think I'll be registering it. In my browsing this seemed to be the cheapest solution for a small company (25 user license).

Notes:

1 Faxmaker does not support faxing landscape documents (it squishes landscape to fit)

2 To get everything to work I had to send to a snapshot format and load the snapshot viewer on the server. This is not a supported feature by Faxmaker but worked for me.

3 Code to send to Snapshot; this is a modification of what I had in code. If there are errors the important thing is that the Snapshot format is specified correctly:
DoCmd.SendObject acSendReport, strReportName, "Snapshot Format (*.SNP)", strTo, , , strSubject, , False

 

[mac318]

Dave, have you considered setting up a Word document template to immulate the form, export the data to the Word document, and fax the Word document?

mac

 

[DavidMark]

Sorry for the late response to your postings, I got side-tracked with other problems. Thanks for the suggestions guys, I especially like the simplicity of mac318's idea; it would be more adaptable to what we already have in use at the moment. Any idea where I would find help/examples for doing that? I would like to click an access button and send raw text to a fancy Word template and automatically have it open up. Then automatically print to FAX. This, I'm sure, is all possible through coding, just don't know where to start!

Thanks!

Dave

 

[lameid]

In my Access97 front end I would write to the SQL querydef property to make a query that runs only the desired record. Then I would record a macro in word to do a fax merge. Next I would move the Word code over to Access and modify it to use automation (createobject and getobject functions).

Of course I'd like to point out that if you can fax from word, you should just as easily be able to load the free MS snapshot viewer and use the sendobect example from my last post. It will be easier to write the code for sendobject and the code will likely run a lot faster.

 

[mac318]

David,
Lameid's suggestion for the snapshot viewer works very well. I prefer using MS Word because creation of the template(s) can be distributed to those personnel who are proficient in using Word while you stay with programming the database. Sometimes I export to Excel because the user is more familiar with it than with Word. A trick I often use is to create an unsecured database to hold one or more tables. I export the data from my secured database to the tables in the unsecured database. Then I link the appropriate Word/Excel documents to the appropriate tables. I export the data to the linked table and then open it with an Access Command Button. You can use a startup macro to send the fax.

mac