Embed a PDF into a letter

**Gene FitzPatrick** · 11-20-2019, 02:28 AM

I have the need to send a report via email. That's no big deal except that in this case, attachments are not allowed. Is it possible to output a report to a letter? Or perhaps embed a PDF into a letter?

Thanks for your help.

Gene

**Ted Giles** · 11-20-2019, 12:25 PM

Sorry Gene, can you confirm which you need please.
Email with pdf content
Email with letter content
Email with content derived from data available on the PC

**Gene FitzPatrick** · 11-20-2019, 02:44 PM

Hi Ted.

Some people get nervous about opening attachments so what I would like is to be able to create a letter and output the results into the body of an email. As far as I know at this time, attaching a PDF is the only way to email a letter. Is that right? If so, then consider this a suggestion for enhancement to address such concerns.

Regards,

Gene

**Ted Giles** · 11-20-2019, 03:23 PM

Understood.
Late here, will look tomorrow.

**MoGrace** · 11-20-2019, 06:45 PM

If you save your letter as a pdf file you should be able to export it to html and then via xbasic put that in the body of the email.

Not saying I know how to do that, but it might get you started... searched the wiki and found PDF Printing Utilities

**Ted Giles** · 11-21-2019, 05:52 AM

Gene, when you create an email, you can load the body of the report from a template.
So, if you save the report as a txt file, then you will be able to use it as the body and not as an attachment.

The trick will be to capture the user ID and make sure that the correct email content goes to the person you want it to.
That is relatively simple using logic which identifies the report in txt format when you save it using variables.

**Mike Wilson** · 11-28-2019, 01:25 AM

Depending on the complexity of the data that is being generated into the report that you can't send, the data can be collected into a text string and put into the message of an email. If the source data is a set with several layers of 1-M relations, it makes the collection extremely difficult, but simple data sets captured into text collections and put into an email message is very doable. I do this all the time.

**Ted Giles** · 11-28-2019, 04:53 AM

Not knowing the complexity prompted me to suggest saving the report as a text file.
It means a different layout to simplify presentation and using that text as a "template".
Saving beautifully crafted report as a plain txt file has its problems, and saving as htm sort of works but exports spurious characters which mess up the email content.
All we need now is Gene to comment.