>I need to add a batch email process to one of our applications. It will send between 500 & 2,000 HTML formatted "newsletter". I think I have dismissed automating outlook (because of it's oh so lovely new security popup!). So I have a few questions?

Definitely don't use Outlook automation. Rick uses wwIPStuff for sending out a few thousand notifications at a time, but says it's not meant as a high volume mailer (primarily because it requires a lot of reconnects to your mail server).

If you are sending out identical newsletters, you may want to consider getting a list server to do the legwork. Here's a list of free ones:

http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/email-resources.htm

If you have a machine you can plug into the Internet, I suggest you put a free list server (check www.mailenable.com) on it. With that product, mailing lists for the list server are in simple text files that would be easy to manipulate from a VFP app.

>1. I have wwIPStuff version 3.0, but notice it has a 64k limit on message body size, does this limit still apply to the new version?

I'm not aware of a limit of the size of the body text - you may want to ask at the west-wind message board (or just download the trial and send a 'typical' test document).

>2. I wanted to "read" replies to look for dead addresses and failed links, if I use the pop3 class is there an easy way to distinguish between failure messages and standard messages? and forward on the non failures?

You'll have to have your application search the header or body text for keywords that indicate the header, body or attachments. Your app can then decide whether to modify the send database or forward the email to a new address.

You can use wwPOP3 to grab messages, check the message body against a keyphrase table and then either alter the mailing list or forward the message. PLEASE NOTE: Sometimes you will get an error message due to a temporary problem, so you may not want to delete people at the first returned email error!

>3. If there are images in the HTML am I correct in assuming these will need to be on a web site and linked so that the email recipient can see them? (IE. no embedding in HTML)

Kinda. It is possible to embed images in mime format and do an 'internal link', but I don't know how many mail clients support this. For maximum reach I suggest you stick with web links for images.

HTH
Michael

>Many Thanks
>
>Gary.