>I am trying to learn some things here - mostly to do with automation (having Tamars' book in hand). I have many ideas on using automation from within VFP into office applications, including some seamless operations. But, I see serious problems in how it is all put together: Specifically sendng emails back and forth.
>
>I am supposing a situation as follows (asterisks mark the things I don't know how to do):
>
>With VFP Automation:
>
>1)A user decides to pull out some very specific client information (SQL Backend)
>2)Open MS Word. Create a word document
>3)Place the selected items on the document
>**
>4)Call on word email automation to Email the word document, document as the email (not as an attachment)
> (as send a UT Message/Thread AS the message, not as an attachment)
>**
>5)Close the word document (without saving)(don't want to eat up space)
>6)Open an Excel document - add the same data, do some calculations on data already there
>7)Save the Excel document
>8)Send email using Outlook, stating document update and location to another person
>
>With some digging and reading, and searches here, I am beginning to better understand automation processes. Having completed most of the above tasks now. However, item 4 above escapes me. Any help in this would be greatly appreciated.

I would rely on mailing tools to do any kind of mailing. Your approach is good for what it need to prepare. But, when comes time to email, I would definitely switch to the mailer. Basically, once your Word/Excel files are ready, you can attach them to your email when you need to automate that with Outlook. I mean once you save the required files on disk, then, you can attach them to your email.

As for me, I'd only use such an approach (automating Outlook) if the process is from a user application. And, probably if the user wants to keep it as if it was sent from Outlook. Otherwise, from Web application and where not needed, I will simply use Rick Strahl wwipstuff DLL to send emails as this is much faster and simpler.