Outlook/Powerpoint - Attachment Tracking or Auto Open Attachment

[cjueno]

Hi,

At my place of work we require members of management to read a powerpoint presentation that is emailed to them weekly to ensure they are updated on recent company activity. Unfortunately it is becoming evident that they are not following this protocol.

I am hoping someone will be able to assist me in finding a way to either automatically open an attachment in an email in outlook (2000) once the email is opened, this way once the read report arrives I know the document was opened OR code the powerpoint presentation so that once the recipient reads the document it sends a confirmation to an email account or file on our company network detailing username and date of opening/reading.

I realise that this is a tough question to answer and realistically if they don't want to read it they won't but I need to provide evidence of employee negligence some how or start forcing the recipient to read the document in some part.

Any ideas will be gratefully recieved.

Many Thanks

cjueno

 

[fumei]

assist me in finding a way to either automatically open an attachment in an email in outlook (2000) once the email is opened

In most places this would be called a virus....

It would be easier to have PowerPoint send an email when the file is opened. However, you will not be able to send that email without the person knowing, if that is what you are wanting.

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[cjueno]

Hi Gerry,

Thanks for the prompt response. Yeah I realise that in some quarters this would be considered a security risk or virus as you kindly put it but this is a genuine request.

If I was to prompt the user to send an email from Powerpoint what would be the best course of action and in addition is it possible to lock the page containing email details until each powerpoint page has been viewed within the presentation?

If I am way of track here let me know what your thinking.

Many Thanks

cjueno

 

[fumei]

First of all you could do it from when the PP file was opened, or just before it closed. I would suggest when it is closed. Why distract more than you need to?

It would not be a case of prompting them to send the email. It would be the case of sending the email, and the Send instruction kicking in a security warning (and rightly so). Basically it states that an email is being sent via code, do you (the user) agree to let it go?

Note...they can refuse. The email would not be sent. If they press the OK button, the email is sent.

There are third party software solutions that pretty much press the OK button. I don't know much about them. There are threads here about such.

lock the page containing email details until each powerpoint page has been viewed within the presentation?

I am not sure what you mean by "page". What page? As for checking if each page of the slides has been viewed....it MAY be possible, but I doubt it. If it is, it will likely be way more work than it is worth.

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[cjueno]

That sounds like a step in the right direction. It would be ideal for powerpoint to send the email on close (after confirmation from the user). The alert would actually work to the company's advantage in that it would highlight the fact that we are monitoring whether the document is being read and allow us to acknowledge those that are.

Could you point me in the direction of some example code for this purpose?

With reference to my quote:

"lock the page containing email details until each powerpoint page has been viewed within the presentation?"

I thought you were indicatiing that I would require a page in the presentation that contained input fields which would be used within the confirmation email. e.g. drop down box with user details and button to run scripting to send email. But I guess I was way off base with that one.

To be honest I haven't spent much time looking into coding in powerpoint & outlook, hence the silly questions.

Thanks for your help on this one

cjueno

 

[cjueno]

After a bit of searching around the net I figure it may be an easier option to email a hyperlink to the staff, this will open the .pps and the final slide will activate a userform to capture viewer details. If you think this is a better option my next task will be to figure out how to get the userform to save the data to a log (txt, doc, xls anything readable). I have started reading up on VBA but if you have any tips please throw me a line.

Thanks

cjueno