Launch e-mail with boilerplate message (2003)

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My database has a form that displays information about members of an on-line forum. When I add a new member, I click a command button that launches an Outlook e-mail message addressed to the current record (the member whose name displays on the form). There’s nothing else in the message–just the e-dress. I’m thinking there must be a way, via VBA, to cause the new message to open with a standard “subject:” (e.g., Welcome to the forum!) and some boilerplate text in the message body. Can anyone suggest where to start. Thanks!

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Does your current code use Docmd.Sendobject to create the email or Outlook automation?

In either case you can specify the Subject and Body of the message in code, but the exact code would be a little different.

If you had two string variables strSubject and strMessage which held the text you wanted to use, this is the code using Docmd.sendObject

DoCmd.SendObject acSendNoObject, , , strTo, , , strSubject, strMessage, True

With Outlook automation you will still use two string variables, but then have something like:

With oMailItem
.To = strTo
.Subject = strSubject
.Body = strMessage
.Display
End With

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I’m not sure how to answer. My code reads thusly:

Private Sub cmdEmailThis_Click()

Dim strEmailAddress As String
strEmailAddress = “mailto:” & Me![MemberEmail]
Application.FollowHyperlink strEmailAddress, , True

End Sub

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Change the line

strEmailAddress = “mailto:” & Me![MemberEmail]

to

strEmailAddress = “mailto:” & Me![MemberEmail] & “?subject=Hello World”

(You should, of course, substitute the appropriate subject). Instead of a fixed subject, you can also use an expression:

Change the line

strEmailAddress = “mailto:” & Me![MemberEmail]

to

strEmailAddress = “mailto:” & Me![MemberEmail] & “?subject=” & Me![SubjectText]

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Thank you, Hans! That’s pretty straightforward. I suppose the matter of boilerplate text in the message body is another matter. Can you suggest an approach or recommend a source or an example?

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You can also add some body text, but a) there is a limit to the length of the mailto string, and you can’t enter line breaks.

Example:

strEmailAddress = “mailto:” & Me![MemberEmail] & “?subject=Hello World&body=Welcome to our forum.”

If you want to set a body text with line breaks, consider using DoCmd.SendObject.

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Lucas

You could create a table to contain the boilerplate text with a line number field in it, and then read it using a loop into a string variable. I have done this before, and used asterisks to bracket variables, e.g. *username*. Once the string has been created, you then use the Replace function to substitute the actual variables for the *…* text.

HTH

Nick

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