Access Hacks

Hack #69. Send Access Data Through Outlook Automatically

Implement bulk emailing of your data by tapping into Outlook objects.

The purpose of most databases is to store and report information. Often, it is necessary to send the reports that are generated by a database to multiple users. This doesn't have to be a manual process. By automating Microsoft Outlook from Access VBA, it is possible to automatically generate reports and send them via email.

The first item you need to determine is whether you are going to send emails only through your address book. If you decide to do that, you don't need to adjust any of the default settings in Outlook. If, however, you want to send to any address through your application, you need to make a change in Outlook.

By default, Outlook automatically checks the email addresses when you send an email. When you are doing this in an automated fashion, you will have errors to deal with if an email address doesn't exist in your address book. To shut off this feature in Outlook, go to the Tools → Options dialog.

On the Options dialog, shown in Figure 7-46, click the E-mail Options button in the Preferences tab, and then click the Advanced E-mail Options button shown in Figure 7-47.

This action brings up a dialog box with three sections: "Save messages," "When new items arrive in my Inbox," and "When sending a message," as shown in Figure 7-48.

The "When sending a message" section contains a checkbox for "Automatic name checking," as shown in Figure ...