Email with a twist (2000/XP)

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One of the charitable organizations I work with sends out a monthly email broadcast to subscribers. Our internet service provider now has a policy in place that does not allow us to send more than 10 emails in a group unless we pay an additional $21/month. Ostensibly to stop spammers, but it seems a money grab.

I was going to adapt a procedure I have to send the emails in small batches automatically and employ Express ClickYes to take care of the clicking needed for Outlook XP’s automation security interference.

Now, here’s the twist: The email is formatted with lots of hyperlinks using Word as the email editor. When the broadcast is sent, for those programs that accomodate it, the info arrives as the body of the message not as an attachment. We would like this format to remain. I have seen many postings showing how to send a document as an attachment. Can somone point me in the right direction for sending the document as the body of the email?

Is it perhaps easier to send this from Word using automation and grabbing the email addresses out of Access? I’m not as keen on this as I have almost no experience with the Word object model. I would really prefer to run the thing from Access.

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Sending emails using Word & getting the email addresses from Access is really very straightforward; the wizard provides handholding.

The only problem I have had is when trying to attach an Access query as data source some queries are not offered as possibilities. If a query has square brackets in the design grid it isn’t offered as a possible data source; there may be others. The solution I used was to export the query output to an excel file & use that as the data source.

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I will pursue that option then. Which wizard specifically are you talking about?

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In Word 2003 select Tools: Letters & Mailings:Mail Merge… to start the wizard & then follow your nose!!

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We don’t use Office 2003. I use 2000 and the charity uses XP. No plans to upgrade. There is nothing like this in the mail merge wizard for 2000 as far as I can see.

Peter

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You can always do it yourself with the Mail Merge toolbar. I’m sure that as available in Word 2000!

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You can always do it yourself with the Mail Merge toolbar. I’m sure that as available in Word 2000!

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Unfortunately, there are substantial differences between 2000 and 2002 in the manner in which mail merges are done. In 2000 once you have specified the data source and composed the main document, you can select the Options button and specify that you want to create emails. In 2002 it is one of the options you get in about Step 5 of 6 as I recall. You might find our Word Merge Tutorial helpful – in particular it references an article in WAW that describes in some detail the process for sending email and some of the pitfalls.

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I will look into WAW tomorrow. Now that you mention it, I recall getting that series. Thanks for the pointing me in the right direction.

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I will look into WAW tomorrow. Now that you mention it, I recall getting that series. Thanks for the pointing me in the right direction.

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I have got the basics figured out now. The only problem I am running into is that the formatted Word document (which has both colours and hyperlinks in it) is being sent as plain text. The coulour is lost and most of the hyperlinks are as well.

I tried changing settings in Outlook to use Word as my email editor and to make new messages as HTML. Any suggestions?

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You may want to look at sending the Word document as an attachment if you really want to preserve text formatting. But I’m a bit surprised that Word won’t generate HTML in XP – it was a bit more dicey with 2000 however. You might also consider using rich text (RTF) and see if that preserves the formatting.

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I should have said that I was using my version which is 2000. I will check things out in XP. I thought about RTF but haven’t tried it. Thanks.

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After almost 2 months, I have finally had a chance to check out using MailMerge on the XP machine that will actually been doing it. Sadly, I am having the same problem with every machine I try. A brief recap:
1)The document is formatted in Word with many hyperlinks.

2)It is sent out as the body of an email message, *not* as an attachment. [This is crucial since we want the senders to be able to read it as formatted within the email message if their browser allows this. As this is an informational email broadcast, the product is severly compromised in its effectiveness if it is an attachment.]

3) If I choose “send to email recipient” and send it to a typed in email address, all formatting is intact when received. If I use a mailmerge and get the email addresses from the database, all hyperlinks are lost and the text is merely text.

I have checked that hyperlinks are working before I try mail merging the document. They are being added in from a list via rightclicking in the document and choosing “Insert Hyperlink”.

Any ideas why this isn’t working?

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I tested in Office XP SP-3. I created a Word document with hyperlinks and merge fields. I merged to e-mail with a data source from Access that contained an E-mail field. In the final step (send e-mail), I specified the e-mail field to be used, and I could choose between sending as attachment, as HTML and as plain text. You clearly indicate that you don’t want the first option. The HTML option preserved the hyperlinks (and they were functional), but they became (as was to be expected) plain text in the plain text option.

I also tested whether the way of connecting to the database mattered, however improbable. The default method (OLE DB) and ODBC produced the same results.

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I forgot to mention that I did select the HTML option. In essence, doing exactly what you did. I am not aware of which service pack is installed on this machine. I can look into upgrading it to SP3 which if I remember correctly is a relatively large and significant upgrade for XP. Do you think it is possible that this might make a difference? It certainly seems like flakey behaviour if the links are preserved if you send the email with the outlook address book, but not if you use mail merge.

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I forgot to mention that I did select the HTML option. In essence, doing exactly what you did. I am not aware of which service pack is installed on this machine. I can look into upgrading it to SP3 which if I remember correctly is a relatively large and significant upgrade for XP. Do you think it is possible that this might make a difference? It certainly seems like flakey behaviour if the links are preserved if you send the email with the outlook address book, but not if you use mail merge.

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According to Description of the Word 2002 update: April 25, 2002 this problem has been fixed over 2.5 years ago in an update that is part of Word 2002 SP-2 (and hence of SP-3 too). So installing either SP-2 or SP-3 should resolve the problem.

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I will check on the service packs installed. It is entirely possible, given the nature of this organization – very realaxed with technology and updates – that they haven’t installed these upgrades.

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I will check on the service packs installed. It is entirely possible, given the nature of this organization – very realaxed with technology and updates – that they haven’t installed these upgrades.

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According to Description of the Word 2002 update: April 25, 2002 this problem has been fixed over 2.5 years ago in an update that is part of Word 2002 SP-2 (and hence of SP-3 too). So installing either SP-2 or SP-3 should resolve the problem.

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I tested in Office XP SP-3. I created a Word document with hyperlinks and merge fields. I merged to e-mail with a data source from Access that contained an E-mail field. In the final step (send e-mail), I specified the e-mail field to be used, and I could choose between sending as attachment, as HTML and as plain text. You clearly indicate that you don’t want the first option. The HTML option preserved the hyperlinks (and they were functional), but they became (as was to be expected) plain text in the plain text option.

I also tested whether the way of connecting to the database mattered, however improbable. The default method (OLE DB) and ODBC produced the same results.

Reply | Quote

After almost 2 months, I have finally had a chance to check out using MailMerge on the XP machine that will actually been doing it. Sadly, I am having the same problem with every machine I try. A brief recap:
1)The document is formatted in Word with many hyperlinks.

2)It is sent out as the body of an email message, *not* as an attachment. [This is crucial since we want the senders to be able to read it as formatted within the email message if their browser allows this. As this is an informational email broadcast, the product is severly compromised in its effectiveness if it is an attachment.]

3) If I choose “send to email recipient” and send it to a typed in email address, all formatting is intact when received. If I use a mailmerge and get the email addresses from the database, all hyperlinks are lost and the text is merely text.

I have checked that hyperlinks are working before I try mail merging the document. They are being added in from a list via rightclicking in the document and choosing “Insert Hyperlink”.

Any ideas why this isn’t working?

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I should have said that I was using my version which is 2000. I will check things out in XP. I thought about RTF but haven’t tried it. Thanks.

Reply | Quote

You may want to look at sending the Word document as an attachment if you really want to preserve text formatting. But I’m a bit surprised that Word won’t generate HTML in XP – it was a bit more dicey with 2000 however. You might also consider using rich text (RTF) and see if that preserves the formatting.

Reply | Quote

I have got the basics figured out now. The only problem I am running into is that the formatted Word document (which has both colours and hyperlinks in it) is being sent as plain text. The coulour is lost and most of the hyperlinks are as well.

I tried changing settings in Outlook to use Word as my email editor and to make new messages as HTML. Any suggestions?

Reply | Quote

Unfortunately, there are substantial differences between 2000 and 2002 in the manner in which mail merges are done. In 2000 once you have specified the data source and composed the main document, you can select the Options button and specify that you want to create emails. In 2002 it is one of the options you get in about Step 5 of 6 as I recall. You might find our Word Merge Tutorial helpful – in particular it references an article in WAW that describes in some detail the process for sending email and some of the pitfalls.

Reply | Quote

We don’t use Office 2003. I use 2000 and the charity uses XP. No plans to upgrade. There is nothing like this in the mail merge wizard for 2000 as far as I can see.

Peter

Reply | Quote

In Word 2003 select Tools: Letters & Mailings:Mail Merge… to start the wizard & then follow your nose!!

Reply | Quote

I will pursue that option then. Which wizard specifically are you talking about?

Reply | Quote

Sending emails using Word & getting the email addresses from Access is really very straightforward; the wizard provides handholding.

The only problem I have had is when trying to attach an Access query as data source some queries are not offered as possibilities. If a query has square brackets in the design grid it isn’t offered as a possible data source; there may be others. The solution I used was to export the query output to an excel file & use that as the data source.

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