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Access and Lotus Notes and Outlook (Office 2013)

I'm changing over from Lotus Notes to Outlook 2013. Using Access 2013.
Unfortunately I do not have Notes available to see how it worked. I need to mimic the same in Outlook as it did in Notes.
I was told that the emails we're automatically sent i.e. When the user picked the function it sent the email and did not bring it up (.DISPLAY) for review or like a draft. But in the old code for notes every place where the email is generated it states .SEND FALSE
I would assume it should be .SEND TRUE or is there a difference in Notes and Outlook? And if so what makes the Notes display and not send an email?

Any help is appreciated.

Sjef Bosman

You'll have a very hard time to mimic Notes in Outlook, getting close will already be very difficult. They are just completely different (mail) environments. That said, how can we help?

I don't quite understand what functionality you need to have in Outlook. Are you talking about an application? Ah, in Access... I think I get it. You have an Access application that you now want to send mails through Outlook?

In Notes, using LotusScript and also VB, you can prepare a mail in the background and send it out using .SEND. The parameter FALSE only indicates that the form should not be sent with the data (sending the form is a Notes feature, in case the receiving party doesn't have the form in their database).

In Notes, you can also prepare a mail in the foreground (using VB) and let the user send it. In that case the user can see the draft mail.

Implementation-wise the background objects to use are NotesSession, NotesDatabase and NotesDocument, whereas the foreground objects would be NotesUIWorkspace, NotesDatabase and NotesUIDocument.

Do you already have sample code for sending a mail in Outlook?

Chuck Lowe

ASKER

Thanks. I see the difference between the foreground and background emails.
This gave me my answer and I know what do to now.

Thanks.

Helen Feddema

Here is some simple code to create and send an email from Access (for the final version, comment out the Display line and uncomment the Send line):

Private Sub SendMailAttachment_Click()
'Created by Helen Feddema 5-19-2000
'Last modified 19-Jan-2010

On Error GoTo ErrorHandler

   Dim appOutlook As New Outlook.Application
   Dim itm As Outlook.MailItem

   'Create new mail message and open it for review before sending
   Set itm = appOutlook.CreateItem(olMailItem)
   With itm
      .To = "John Doe"
      .Subject = "Contacts file you requested"
      .Body = "Email body text"
      .Display
      '.Send
   End With
   
ErrorHandlerExit:
   Exit Sub

ErrorHandler:
   MsgBox "Error No: " & Err.Number & "; Description: " & Err.Description
   Resume ErrorHandlerExit

End Sub

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Chuck Lowe

ASKER

@Helen
Thanks. I had that code already. My issue was figuring out how Notes was sending emails.
It works differently than Outlook does as it's not as simple as switching between .Display and .Send being set for the email to be sent automatically or staying on the screen (as a draft) for the user to review and/or change before sending.

We also have another issue that IT set up a Group Policy that won't let us send emails automatically. Our work around was to use SENDKEYS with CTRL + ENTER. I did find however that in that case I did need the .DISPLAY otherwise the emails did not send and it did not give an error as such. I also had to add a wait of 100 milliseconds (seemed to be working) between the .DISPLAY and SENDKEYS otherwise the email (when sending multiples in a loop) stayed on the screen as a draft. Some info for others in case they need a work around.
But thanks again.

-Chuck

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Chuck Lowe

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Sjef Bosman

So that's how you "appreciate any help" ... ;-)

Chuck Lowe

ASKER

@Sjef
I found the answer myself! I thanked everyone for their answers! How else should I have done it?

Sjef Bosman

Aaah, well now... you could have assigned points to valuable contributions. The questions you asked were: "I would assume it should be .SEND TRUE or is there a difference in Notes and Outlook? And if so what makes the Notes display and not send an email?" and that's what I responded to. The solution you propose is to the unasked question about your Group Policy, which isn't in the title of the question nor in its contents.

It's often so hard for us to guess right...

Let me just say that I'm glad you found a solution. :-)

Chuck Lowe

ASKER

@Sjef
If you look closely the GROUP Policy was a second part and not of the original question which no one commented on.

I'm sorry if I hurt any body's feelings!

Sjef Bosman

Don't worry, my feelings didn't get hurt. It's just that I think I did look closely and I did comment on your original question. It might simply be the fact that English isn't my first language...

See you next question!

Chuck Lowe

ASKER

I found the answer myself.