>I am working on a feature where the user can add documents to the database. Mostly this is done by browsing to a file (image or office document or PDF file) and then the file is saved in the database. This is working good so far (except I cannot display the office documents in the VFP form itself, but I dropped that idea).
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>I think it would make sense to be able to add emails as well, but that seems to be more complex. The easiest way of course is if the user saves the email message as a file, and then browses to that file in the application.
>To make it more integrated, I could use office automation to browse the email messages when the client uses Outlook, but they might use Lotus Notes and that complicates issues. I was wondering if it would be an idea to use drag and drop where the user could drag an email message to the form, either from Outlook or from the file system, but I have never done drag and drop from other applications. I am a little bit undecided and would appreciate any comments or ideas.

My first question would be whether your app is a PIM or similar, or some sort of archiver (perhaps used for legal or regulatory purposes).

If a PIM, I would go to almost any length to *avoid* putting copies of original external documents into my own database. Managing different versions of documents between external originals, and my DB copies would be a nightmare.

If an archiver, I'd be concerned about being able to read, some time in the future, documents stored in my DB today. In future the apps to open those docs may no longer exist, be installed on the computer, or the current version may not be able to open older-version documents. In that circumstance my first approach would be to convert all incoming documents to some standard format that I know will be supported for some time.

One way to do that would be to use PDF. PDF printer drivers are widely available. If a user wants to store a document in your DB, it would first be printed to a PDF file, then the PDF file gets stored. There will likely be some hassles installing a PDF printer driver along with the rest of your app, and instructing users in its use (or somehow automating it) but that will let you support a very wide range of external applications, basically anything that can print. Probably much less hassle than setting up individual "connectors" for potentially many different external applications.