Microsoft® Access® 2010 24-Hour Trainer

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Collecting Data via E-mail

The Collect Data Through E-Mail Messages Wizard, often called the Data Collection feature, allows users to collect information from one or more recipients via e-mail messages that automatically populate the database records when returned to Outlook. Originally introduced in Access 2007, the Data Collection feature creates an e-mail containing a form that the recipients can return with the requested information. When the e-mail is received by Outlook, the data stored in the form is either appended to the table or the existing records are updated, depending on which option has been selected. To use this feature, the originator of the request must be using Outlook and the recipients will need to have e-mail applications that can receive HTML messages or, if the sender chooses to use Microsoft InfoPath forms, all the recipients will need to have both Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft InfoPath installed, both of which are included with Office 2010 Professional.

To provide an example of how the Data Collection feature can be used, consider a scenario for a small business user. A Human Resources manager needs to create a phone number list of each of the employees that currently work for the company. Instead of sending a standard e-mail requesting the data and manually transferring the records from the returned e-mails, the Access 2010 e-mail Data Collection feature could be used to create the e-mails and input the records automatically, effectively doing all ...