Good Morning ,
I have a quotation / invoice database that I use to send out quotes by fax 
to clients ..however I wish to send the quotation out by email to my 
government clients.......I have filemaker 8 and would appreciate any 
help...I have a very limited knowledge of filemaker ..but am keen to learn 
more
I have found info on sending a contents of a field but not the full document
kind regards
Tim 

In article <43430bca$1@funnel.arach.net.au>, "Tim Stoner"
<tstoner@arach.net.au> wrote:

> Good Morning ,
> I have a quotation / invoice database that I use to send out quotes by fax 
> to clients ..however I wish to send the quotation out by email to my 
> government clients.......I have filemaker 8 and would appreciate any 
> help...I have a very limited knowledge of filemaker ..but am keen to learn 
> more
> I have found info on sending a contents of a field but not the full document
> kind regards
> Tim 

Before starting anything on your Invoice system, you may want to "play"
with a small test database to make sure emailing works with your
particular email application - FileMaker's Send Mail script command
(the name may have been changed in newer versions) can be a bit flakey
with some applications.

There might be an easier way in FileMaker 7 or 8, but there's two
options that'll work in any version of FileMaker.

A.  Create a PDF of the Invoice layout.
    There's various ways of doing this, including freeware / shareware
    "printer drivers" that allow you to "print" direct to a PDF. The
    advantage here is that it will include all the same lines, fonts
    and graphics of a printed / faxed Invoice. Of course the clients 
    would need the free Acrobat Reader installed on their computer, 
    and not everyone does.


B.  Use a Text / Calculation field.
    Add a new field that is used to create a text-only version of the 
    invoice. This field can then be emailed using the Send Mail script 
    command. This one depends on how you've created your Invoice data, 
    eg. if you're using a related table / file you will need to use a 
    script to loop through all the related records obtaining their 
    data, otherwise a normal Calculation field will do. Basically 
    you'd end up with a script / Calculation something like:

         ClientName & "�" & ClientAddress & "�" 
         & InvoiceItem & "{tab}" & InvoiceAmount

    You can use hypens or underscores "_" to create horizontal lines
    for use above totals, etc. I wouldn't bother being too fancy 
    since emails are SUPPOSED to be text only and not have fonts, etc.
    so many email applications will screw up anything complicated 
    anyway.
    


The other way is to use a email plug-in that gives FileMaker better
emailing options, but they tend to be expensive.




Helpful Harry                   
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships  ;o)

FileMaker 8 allows you to print to a PDF file.
You can specify the location of this output file.
It also allows you to send e-mails and include attachments such as the
above mentioned PDF file.

You should be aware that the PDF files that FileMaker generates are
magnitudes larger than normal.
If you're scripting the the creation and sending of the files, then I
would suggest that you save the PDF file at c:\
pause the script for 3 seconds
then email the file with the attachment to make sure it had enough time
to show up

On the send e-mail you have an option to do that with dialog, I believe
that just puts the e-mail into the out folder but doesn't send it so
that you can see the e-mail before its sent.  I would recommend a bit
of testing though, I've seen Outlook do some strange things when told
to send an email.

Many thanks for help
Tim
"Tim Stoner" <tstoner@arach.net.au> wrote in message 
news:43430bca$1@funnel.arach.net.au...
> Good Morning ,
> I have a quotation / invoice database that I use to send out quotes by fax 
> to clients ..however I wish to send the quotation out by email to my 
> government clients.......I have filemaker 8 and would appreciate any 
> help...I have a very limited knowledge of filemaker ..but am keen to learn 
> more
> I have found info on sending a contents of a field but not the full 
> document
> kind regards
> Tim
>