microsoft outlook/mail merge

pog it

Hi, I did post something about this before but I realise I was very vague so I'll give as much info as I know and have and hope that someone can help me based on that

I have Microsoft Outlook 2003, and Microsoft Access XP version.

I haven't used Access before this job so if I don't tell you enough to go on, my apologies. Basically, on our website we have a form that visitors can fill out in order to request a brochure. This in turn gets sent to our Outlook Inbox, and is also supposed to automatically go into our database in Access, but at the moment it isn't.

We had a power cut here a few weeks ago and it hasn't been working since this, but again I'm not sure that is very helpful.

I hope someone can give me an idea about what's going on!
Thankies all.

Tom Dunne

You will need to find out how the website is connected to the Access database.

Is it Web->Outlook->Access (unlikely) or Web->Outlook and Web->Access.

BostonB

As Tom says the web site writes the data to access and also sends a mail to your outlook. So you need to look at the website, specifically the online form. How it works, where its hosted, what server its one, what web application runs it etc.

pog it

Thanks Tom, I had been assuming web to outlook to access was the case.
Do you know how can I check this by any chance?

pog it

The server is novara.

Can I tell by just going to the website homepage. and clicking on the request brochure link and bringing up the form, or do I need to go into the website (mambo) design/administration and look at settings there instead?

Tom Dunne

TBH, it's not something that can be easily explained in a few lines on a message board. There about a million different ways it can be done (ok, slight exaggeration).

Post back the info that BostonB has asked for and we will see what we can do.

pog it

Okay the website software is Mambo, which is used to create the site. It's a content management system kind of web design, but you're probably already familiar with it.

We use Firefox now as I found that with Internet Explorer the pages weren't rendering properly so we couldn't see all the dropdown menus, etc.

Novara is the server, and to get into our control panel we use cphost.ie, I believe this is connected to Novara (again not 100% sure).

Is that what you needed to know?

pog it

the website is http://www.achill-fieldschool.com

Tom Dunne

Right, I'm guessing here, but would I be correct in saying that other than e-mails, you do not have any direct connection to the website. For example, am I correct in saying there is no scheduled job or task that runs on any of your computers and pulls info from the website?

What I am getting at is that there may after all be a script on the MS Outlook side that is doing some kind of extract an putting the data into MS Access.

pog it

Yes, as far as I know there isn't any other direct connection with the site...So at the moment brochure requests are coming into Outlook (sent from the website), but when we go to Access database where the mail requests used to go as well, there is nothing updated despite plenty of requests going into Outlook Mail.

it seems to be a complicated issue alright. I'm no I.T expert obviously !! but do you think we can solve it this way or should I be suggesting to my employer that they need an expert in here to do it??

One thing I can add though, and it's probably not relevant, is that currently the brochure requests are going into our inbox, and are not getting streamed into 'Website Brochure Requests' folder. Probably not useful at all but just in case..

Tom Dunne

pog it wrote:

it seems to be a complicated issue alright. I'm no I.T expert obviously !! but do you think we can solve it this way or should I be suggesting to my employer that they need an expert in here to do it??

It would make it easier if you could get hold of the person who actually set it up for you. Calling somebody in to do a job like this could get messy.

pog it wrote:

One thing I can add though, and it's probably not relevant, is that currently the brochure requests are going into our inbox, and are not getting streamed into 'Website Brochure Requests' folder. Probably not useful at all but just in case..

Sounds like scripts are not being run, which could explain why nothing is getting to the Access database. This could be your problem.

pog it

By any chance do you know how I can run these scripts?

Tom Dunne

No idea. Remember, this is only me guessing. I would really need to be in front of the computer to see what the crack is. A few things you can try:

Reboot the computer. The old favourite, may/may not work.

Start up Access and then Outlook, see if that makes any difference (don't close Access).

In Outlook go to the Tools menu and see if you can see anything in there to do with web/database/brochure etc.

pog it

Thanks for your efforts Tom. I've looked in tools and can't see anything relevant. I tried to get online help from MS but as we are operating on an open licence it seems there is nothing they can do for us unless we pay them a fee. so I'm just going to do some google searching for how to stream the mail and maybe get around it that way..will let you know if I do come up with anything.