Email

[Bradford Powell]

I notice the Alpha 5 V5 has an email client. Can this facility also retrieve email and associated email with contacts.

Thanks

Brad Powell

[AaronBBrown]

RE: Email

What do you mean by associated email with contacts?

There is a function, email_receive(), that will download mail to a table. You first have to set up an email profile in View->Settings->Email.

[Bradford Powell]

RE: Email

Thanks for your response Aaron.

I mean, can you associate a received or sent email with a contact.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I found the email send client, but I can't find how to retrieve. I have set up a profile.

Thanks,

Brad Powell

[AaronBBrown]

RE: Email

You need a profile set up for email sending also.

To send an email to a contact, you could store the contact in your table. On your contact management form, add the email field and change it to type "Email A5" or "Email". Then, when you give focus to the field, you will have an email button to press which will bring up either your external MAPI email client or the Alpha Five email client.

[Bradford Powell]

RE: Email

Thanks Aaron:

How do I find the email receive capability?

Brad

[AaronBBrown]

RE: Email

There is an xbasic function called email_receive()

[Bradford Powell]

RE: Email

Can you help a raw beginner and non-programmer. Isn't there a button I can push somewhere?

Thanks

Brad

[MS]

RE: Email

Hi Brad,

first you need to enter details of your e-mail account.
Look for the Tools menu
If you can't see it, you're probably in form design mode so click on the disk icon at top left to save your work, then exit the designer, otherwise just go to the Control Panel
Go Tools>E-mail
Click the Preferences button (one in from top right)
Use the default (new profile) for now
Click the Account tab and enter your e-mail account details as you would in any other e-mail client
Click OK
Now go to the Control Panel
Click the Forms tab
Dbl-click the form you want your button on
Click the Form Designer button (top left)
The Toolbox appears on the right
Click the 'OK' button on the Toolbar
Draw your button on your form
In the window that opens, the label field is highlit for you to type the text you want on your button
Select 'Use XBasic Editor' at the bottom
Click Next
In the window that comes up, type...

email_receive(.t.)

(The .t. is just a switch to tell the receive window to open.)
Click Finish
Click the Save button to save the form (disk icon at top left-ish)
Click the Form View button at top left.
When you click your button, Alpha will attempt to download your mail and will open a default form to display the messages and it will create a table to store your incoming messages.
The table is...
A_Email_Inbox.Dbf
...in the same folder as the Alpha 5 app (C:/Program Files/A5V5 unless you changed that at install)

That's it, but see the comments below:

1) Details on incoming e-mailing are on p441 and 508-512 of the XBasic Reference Manual which you can download from...
http://www.alphasoftware.com/support/tech/alpha5/help.asp
Unfortunately documentation on incoming e-mail is a little thin at the moment

2) When I tried this and the more advanced scripts, not all the fields downloaded correctly. Aaron at Alpha is on the case though.

Good luck
MS

[Bradford Powell]

RE: Email

MS

Thanks greatly for the detailed instructions. I followed them until adding the email_receive(.t.) and hitting "finish." At that point, Alpha crashed. Subsequently, the option to continue my evaluation (in my second day) was no longer available. Accordingly, I can get no further until I contact Alpha in the morning.

Regards,

Brad Powell

[AaronBBrown]

RE: Email

Please explain "Alpha crashed."

[Bradford Powell]

RE: Email

The application gave an error message (which I don't remember) and closed.

Brad