Generate e-mail from address book field 2

[VicBlake]

I want to be able to double click on an e-mail address in an access address book and automatically generate a blank e-mail in Outlook to that person. Someone please help. I have tried and tried, even with advice from the forum, but never quite crack the problem

Vic Blake

 

[smah]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by an 'access address book', but I think it's probably just being treated as text. Try making that field a hyperlink in the following format:

mailto:name@domain.com

 

[VicBlake]

Thanks for the message but I am still getting nowhere. I have created a personal address book using Access and one of the fields is 'e-mail address'. I want to be able to double click on each individual entry to generate a blank e-mail to that person.

I have tried generating a hyperlink using the insert menu in design view but this opens up a SEPARATE hyperlink field which is not really what I want (and anyway still cannot be made to work).

Are you (or is some other kind person) able to spell out in detail what the procedure is - cos I'm getting nowhere at all!

With thanks and in frustation.

 

[Molby]

Go into the design view of your table, set the field you want to contain the e-mail addresses to hyperlink. Then in the table type "mailto:johnsmith"hotmail.com". Clicking on this link generates an e-mail.

 

[VicBlake]

Moby - This is brilliant - thanks - the furthest I have got so far, mostly because people usually seem to assume that I know precisely what they are talking about.

I am still stuck though insofar as I need the readout of each individual e-mail field to remain unaffected by additional commands and text. This is because I use this address book to print out an address book with all this information in, if you follow my drift. Perhaps it possible to do as you advise but somehow hide the 'offending extra text'

?

V

 

[Molby]

I don't know of anyway of adding additional text to that field without it being part of the hyperlink. Can't you include the extra text in another field? Sorry I'm not quite understanding exactly what it is you're doing.

 

[VicBlake]

Hello again. Sorry if I'm confusing you - hard not to do unless I write a lengthy account of what I have been up to. As I say, I just want to be able to double click on any given e-mail address to generate a blank e-mail.

If I configure each field as a hyperlink in table/design view it automatically adds an http address to the end of the input, making a complete hash of the printed out version (and it still does not generate my blank e-mail). If I create a hyperlink field in form view using the insert hyperlink command I am prompted to include an e-mail address. Whatever I do I end up with a separate cmd box (from the actual e-mail address)which prompts me and will generate a blank e-mail but only to the address that I entered. Does that make sense.

I have had lots of suggestions including pages of unfathomable code - which I painstakingly type up but still gets me nowhere.

Thanks for your patience.

V

 

[Molby]

What version of Access and Outlook are you using?

 

[VicBlake]

WinXP and Office XP

 

[Molby]

Blimey, you're well ahead of me. I'm still on access 97, and windows NT. But what I have said works for me. I just enter mailto:johnsmith@hotmail.com,bobsmith@hotmail.com and you get the e-mail populating with the addresses from the one cell. Maybe if you can include an example of what you have in the field?

 

[VicBlake]

You ARE a patient person! The data field is just that - it is a text field and the database has various e-mail addresses entered in this field which I want to use to generate e-mails. As I say, if I configure it as a hyperlink then it automatically appends an http address to the end of each entry, cocking up the print outs of my address book - and still not working because then it keeps searching for a web address.

Are you on inernet messenger? If so vic@vicblake.fsnet.co.uk or just contact me direct which would save us time. I would LOVE someone to sort this one out for me but don't want to try your patience.

V

 

[Molby]

Sorry, my work doesn't allow Messenger. That appending of the http address must be something new in XP, nothing like that occurs in 97. Apart from checking that you have the "Mailto:" at the beginning of the first e-mail address, I'm afraid I'm out of ideas. Sorry.

 

[VicBlake]

A thousand thanks anyway. Will just have to keep pounding away at the problem.

 

[gonenuts]

So you want a hyperlink field, but need the email address without the "mailto:" in front? Best way I can think of is to have two fields for the email address, one hyperlink and one text only and print out the text fields using a query or report, but use the hyperlink field for the mail shortcut…maybe in a form. Once you’ve created the hyperlink field, you can create an update query to copy data from the mail field and add the mailto: in front.

From what I can tell, any other way would require some VB coding in a form to format the text email field to display as a hyperlink with "mailto:" in front.

 

[VicBlake]

That's the gist of it. I need just the individual e-mail addresses entered the data field. Ideally I want just to double click on each entry to generate a blank e-mail to its addressee.

Others have suggested building an event (or macro?) which is called up by double clicking on the field but the various pages of procedure and code they have sent me have, unfortunately, not been sufficiently idiot-proof for me actually to make it work.

The thing is I KNOW this can be done.

Save me someone!

 

[zbnet]

I don't use AccessXP, but previous versions of Office do support the fuctionality you're trying to get. The actual hyperlink is Mailto:name@somewhere.com, but the hyperlink has a seperate 'Text to display' field which is name@somewhere.com, which is what you want to print. These Hyperlinks get setup automatically if I type a valid email address into (say) Excel 97, and I can right-click them and Edit the contents of either field.

 

[VicBlake]

Will give it a go - thanks

 

[VicBlake]

I have managed to generate a blank e-mail by using the hyperlink field as a button but cannot get it to automatically enter the contents of the 'e-mail address' field.

I suspect I need to redesign the form so that the hyperlink I have created becomes the actual input field for each e-mail address. This will be my next step. Keep you all posted.

V

 

[comaboy]

I think you haven't got your head around the way access deals with hyperlinks ;-)
Experiment: See if this helps you out:

* Open a table in Design View
* New Field EmailTest
-DataType: Hyperlink
* Save and view the table data.
* Right-click on a cell in the new hyperlink field.
Click: Hyperlink->Hyperlink->Edit Hyperlink.
*Choose "Email" option on left.
*Fill out email addy (Notice the "mailto:" gets added automatically)
*Save your link and return to the table. A single-click should now do the job!