Opening Outlook window to Send...

[bpmark]

Can the plugin call up an Outlook window to review and finish the Send?

Thanks,

Mark

[Kevin Clemons]

If you would like to be able to send emails from FileMaker and edit them first in the Outlook before they are sent then the only way is to actually change your Outlook send/receive settings. This is not a plug-in function but rather a functionality of Outlook. In Outlook navigate to “Tools,” “Options,” then the “Mail Setup” tab. There you will find the “Send/Receive” settings. Here you can mandate user interaction to Send/Receive by un-selecting the “Send immediately when connected” button as shown in the attached image. This way the emails will not be sent until the user selects the “Send/Receive” button in Outlook. This will give the user the opportunity to edit or preview the emails in Outlook before sending.  The correct functionality if you change your Outlook settings are that emails should now be in the Outbox rather than the Sent Items. You can then edit the emails from the Outbox before sending.

[ktbutter]

Hi Mark

I have just asked for a quote for them to see if it is possible to get it to behave like Filemakers native "send mail" script step when you don't tick the "perform without dialog" checkbox - which pops the email open in the client and allows for editing. The problem with making the change in Outlook above is that any email created in the client ends up in the outbox instead of being sent when the user clicks send. If the users have been using outlook for a number of years they cannot seem to accept you making this change to their pc - they expect it to send when they hit send as that is what they have always been used to.

I have tried suggesting they edit the content in fm first but they want to do things like change font colours and styling but they have no html knowledge, I looked at building something in that turned the text to html (e.g JazzHTML) but decided there is too much overhead in it  for what they are trying to achieve and really the best solution is to allow them to do what they want to do in outlook before they click send. They were so excited to be able to generate html emails from fm for their confirmation and cancellation emails after 7 years of only having plain text... but after all the work I have put in we have hit a wall on what to do about allowing them to customise the email prior to send. They are not prepared to have all emails sit in the outbox first. They want the best of both worlds - to be able to edit in the client like they could when using fm native send mail but have the emails coming out of fm include their logo and styling like productive computings send mail allows.

This topic has had quite a few views so maybe collectively we can put in a feature request.