Russ,

>We have a mixture of clients who will want to use differing email clients: Outlook / Outlook-Express / Express-it / Novell Groupwise / who-knows-what. And some may not have outlook ( i.e. creatobject("outlook.application") ... etc is not a viable solution.)

You have to find out if the other mail programs can and have established themselves as the Simple MAPI client or not. Outlook and OutlookExpress both have that as a configuration item under Tools/Options. You'll probably have to do some research on the other mail clients and have some help ready for folks that run into problems.

>My understanding is that the email client should be installing the Mapi stuff - and that Mapi should be available to my VFP app after any email client has been installed. (or should it ?)
>
>Qns:
>1. What am I doing wrong ?
>2. What do I need to do in my rollout of the application (without mucking up the users current email client/preferences)?
>3. Will this work for Outlook express users ?

Installing the MAPI OCX along with your program shouldn't disturb the actual mail client at all. MAPI isn't a mail program, it's simply an interface that wraps the true mail client.