I maintain an activity list for our club which has 250+ members. Each member has a list of activities they are interested in and their e-mail address. I query the file weekly and email just those activities that are of current interest - usually about 50.
I then create a text message and then manually create and send the 50 emails. I would like a program that would take my queried list of email addresses and create an email with the addresses filled in automatically.
Can psSendMail do this or can you suggest something that can?
Yes, it can but it's for use within another Win32 application like Paradox or Access. Do you use Paradox or Access? Or, is this a manual process for you.
Sorry you didn't get an email notification. Not sure what that's about. Hopefully you get a notification for this one. No problem on moving on to other topics, just let us know when you want to move forward on this.
I am doing work for a local non-profit Athletic Club. The club has over 39,000 members, but only 3 to 4 thousand are actively infolved in athletics.
The database for the athletic events is maintained by a 32bit computer using Pdoxx 7 for the past 24 years. We are currently experiencing an increase in athletic participation and are having to upgrade our courrent software to accomodate the increased volume.
out main problem is informing the members of upcomming events - evnet changes - and other time sensitive invoformation on a timely basis.
I have modified our programs to create an list of generic email txt depending upon activity
I have also Set queries to automatically go with selected data.
Problem How specifically does psdSendMaill,dll work.> I have our system now rigged to print out forms with the required data and addresses .. Insteadm I want to send that data directly info Outlook or any other handler to prepare a standard email
I have downloaded the demo program and tried to make it do what I want. So far I have hit a blank wall I have read all the instructions but still can't seem to figure out how to do the things I want to do. I am using 32 bit Pdox on latest XP-SP's
1. I use the form menu to create a newsletter with calendars and Pix.
2. I query the master table and obtain an answer (Renamed MailOut) which contains the Email address of the member.
Problem:
A. I want to create an email form with a subject that I will type.
B. I want to load the email body with the form above.
D I want to fill the send to: with the first email address
E I want to put the remaining addresses in the BCC area.
Where can I read more on how to do this? Is there an area where i can see a complete sample of how to do it.
psSendMail is used to compose and send the email from within your existing application. It does not need anyother email client. I would suggest that you download the demo and look at the delphi and paradox expamples.
As Mike said, psSendMail is a DLL that is intended to be used by another program; one written in Access, Paradox, Delphi. Really, any development tool that can utilize Win32 DLLs can use psSendMail.
That said, you may not have such tools, or be a developer.
We can help by either enhancing your existing application, or by building you a custom one.
Just let us know your requirements, and how your data is presently stored. We'd be happy to give you a proposal.
One of the nice things about psSendMail is that, as a DLL, it doesn't really "care" what tools you use to create the programs that calls it, nor does it have dependencies upon any particular database.
So, regardless your development tool or database, psSendMail is all set to go, provided that your dev tool allows for invoking a DLL and using its API.
A tip: You don't necessarily need to create any kind of intermediate "results" file or table to use psSendMail. Just create the query you need to extract the approprate group of people.
I would "pull" the person's name (first and last; concatenated if necessary), and email address.
Then you write a simple "loop" to iterate over your query's result set.
You only need to create the message content (text) once, and pass it in to psSendMail.
Then, for each row in your query, you simply give psSendMail the new "To" and email address values; and tell it to send.
With a little more work on your part, you can customize each message with, say, the recipient's name right in the message text. psSendMail doesn't do that for you, but it's typically not a difficult programming task. (If you do this, you will need to update the message for each row in your query.)
The above is an oversimplification, of course, but the psSendMail manual (included in the download) lists and explains all the API calls. It's pretty easy to use.
psSendMail can also handle HTML messages, and one or more attachments.
One thing to be aware of: When sending "bulk" emails, you run a slight risk of getting "blacklisted" as a spammer (this applies regardless the sending mechanism you choose). psSendMail has a neat feature that helps you avoid the "spam police:"
Every email-sending client can (or should be able to) set an important email header value: "X-mailer." This identifies the sending program. psSendMail allows you to specify this value, which can make your emails appear to come from a unique sending program. You definitely want to take advantage of this feature. It's very easy to use.
psSendMail also supports username/password authentication, so if your SMTP host requires those, you're all set.
A few words about "forms," pictures, and psSendMail...
The only way to create a "formatted" message in psSendmail is to put HTML into the message body, and specify HTML content via the API.
I'm not a Paradox developer, so I have no idea how a PDOX "form" would translate into something psSendMail can handle. If you want formatted message bodies, you need to supply HTML.
As for pictures: There's bad news and good news.
psSendMail does not (yet) support images in a message body. But there's an easy way around that:
1: Host the image(s) somewhere in web space, so they can be referenced by a URL in your message.
1a: If your HTML references an external CSS style sheet, that'll need to be hosted in web space, too.
2: Create a "web page" using the remotely hosted images. Test it.
3: Once it looks the way you like, copy the "body" part of your HTML into a psSendMail message, and inform psSendMail that the message body is HTML.
Tip 1: Use the Delphi demo to send yourself a test email of your HTML with image links. That's the quickest way to see if things arrive looking as you intended. The execuatble is included, and it works.
The subject, to, and bcc topics are all covered in the API doco; and used in the demos.
Tip 2: Don't be afraid to study the Delphi source code that comes with the demo. You don't need Delphi; just use any text editor to open the .pas files. It's just code, pretty easy to read. Although it's not ObjectPAL code, I think you can catch its drift.
Ah, one more thing: I'd avoid using cc and bcc to send to lots of recipients. The spam police watch that for excesses. I think it's better to loop through your recipient table, and send each an individual email.
Prestwood IT
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Where can I read more on how to do this? Is there an area where i can see a complete sample of how to do it.
