Send an Automated Email

[jadeverell]

Hi,

I have a database that contains information of contracts / tenders and need to do the following task:

* when a contract reaches its expiry date, i want to send an automated email to notify the Account manager.

I have a query/form that displays all the expired contracts but wanted to add some 'automation' into it.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Also, if the Access DB isn't open and current date matches the contract expiry date, is there a method to still send the automatic email?

Thanks

JD

[NeoPa]

I know little detail about emailing or scheduling tasks from Access. However, I can share with you how I'd approach this and some ideas of where to look in the hope that it can be of use to you.
I would avoid a fully automatic approach if possible and simply run a procedure which would batch-process the items required.
If it's absolutely necessary to automate this I would look at using an external scheduler to open the database and have a form start on startup. The code in this form could then be used to trigger the process you need. Alternatively, if you know the database will be open anyway, you can generally use Timer code (OnTimer & TimerInterval properties of the form) to trigger your process.
Check into command line parameters too. If these are accessible to your form code, they can be used to enable the code to behave differently depending on how it was opened (human or scheduler).
Again, I'm no great expert on sending e-mail from within Access but I believe there is expertise here to help with that if required (some existing threads discuss various options). Bear in mind that (at least) some methods require the operator to accept the attempt to send the email. This would be a problem if you intend to have it work automatically and unattended.