If your database produces invoices, letters or other reports, you may well need a facility to email them to other people.
The first challenge is to decide what format to send them in. For all but very basic data, you will probably have to discount RTF ("Rich Text Format") and HTML (good ol' web format), as the recipient may well see something very different to what you see at your end.
A promising idea is to use the Access "Snapshot" format. If the person at the other end has MS-Access too, they will see exactly what you see, using the Access "Snapshot Viewer" software that came with MS-Access. However, if they don't have Access, they probably don't have the Snapshot Viewer and won't be able to open your attachment at all. If you have a small, fixed list of recipients and you know them well, you could get them to download the Snapshot Viewer (it's free!) - you can get it from our Resources page.
However, if you want to send to pretty well anyone in a reliable format, you need to create a PDF version of your report and attach it to an email. PDF documents can be read by Adobe Acrobat Reader, which most people have installed on their PCs, as it's so commonly used. If they don't have it, they can get it free - again via the Resources page.
The good news is, if you have Access 2007, this is really easy. You do first need to make sure the PDF add-in for Office 2007 has been downloaded and installed. After that, it's a breeze. Just preview your report (invoice, letter, whatever) on the screen and click the Office button at top left of your screen.
From the menu which appears, select Email. Then select PDF Format. Voila! An email appears with your document attached as a PDF. How easy is that?
If you have a previous version of Access, though, this facility is unfortunately not available to you. However, there are various 3rd party tools to provide similar functionality. Our favourite is PDF995, which is free if you don't mind adverts, or a few pounds to operate ad-free.
Once installed, PDF995 appears as a printer on your PC. So you can preview your report and then just "print" it, selecting the PDF printer as the destination. This can be configured to automatically attach to an email in a similar manner to Access 2007, although the integrated 2007 solution is much neater and easier to use. It's a good reason to upgrade to Office 2007, I reckon!
