[AccessD] Winfax Pro and Access

Stuart,
>> First question is why does he receive requests for bids by fax <<

First answer: because that's the way most of them do it.  I agree, though,
that it would be ideal if they'd all switch to e-mail.

However, I'm pretty sure that the people requesting bids print a hard copy
of the items for which they want prices.  That hard copy is saved in their
files.  It's easy enough to print the document to a PDF (for us, anyway),
but I think it might be a long haul before everyone switched to e-mail.

>> These days, if you have  an "All-in-one" printer/scanner/fax (I use an HP
Officejet J4500),
you can just print an Access report to it and it will interface to your
Addressbook with all of
your customer details. No need for third party software  such as Winfax. <<

I guess I knew that Windows handled faxes...I have simply never used its
capability.

>> I've got one system with a client which sends out several thousand PDF
invoices as email
attachments every month  - all done through a mash up of Access, MakePDF,
Blat and a
another small PowerBasic application to tie them together. <<

The term "mashup" is precisely appropriate with my client.

Is it "MailPDF" or "MakePDF"?

I take it that PowerBasic is your language of choice?

Thank you,

Steve Erbach

On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Stuart McLachlan
<stuart at lexacorp.com.pg>wrote:

> First question is why does he receive requests for bids by fax.  Is it
> because that's the way is
> clients want to do it or is it because they don't know that they could
> email them to him.  You
> need to find out what would be the effect of requesting his clients to use
> email instead.  That
> will help determine the most suitable solution.
>
> These days, if you have  an "All-in-one" printer/scanner/fax (I use an HP
> Officejet J4500),
> you can just print an Access report to it and it will interface to your
> Addressbook with all of
> your customer details. No need for third party software  such as Winfax.
>
> Emailing PDFs and the like can get a bit tricky using just VBA and Outlook,
> but there are
> plenty of alternatives methods - including printing to a PDF printer and
> then using Blat or
> using Ghostscript and a utility I wrote called MailPDF which you can find
> on my website at
> http://www.lexacorp.com.pg under Downloads.
>
> I've got one system with a client which sends out several thousand PDF
> invoices as email
> attachments every month  - all done through a mash up of Access, MakePDF,
> Blat and a
> another small PowerBasic application to tie them together.
>
>
> --
> Stuart
>
> On 12 Sep 2009 at 11:46, Steve Erbach wrote:
>
> > Dear Group,
> > I have an old client (started working with him right after I started my
> > business in '91) who continues to use Paradox for DOS for the majority of
> > his business.  I'm his go-to guy for all of that work as well as for
> Paradox
> > for Windows, which I introduced into his company to produce more flexible
> > reporting, and Access 2003.  I wrote an EDI component for processing
> > purchase orders in Access using a VBA EDI library I recommended he
> purchase.
> >
> > Anyway, I've been trying over the years to get him to switch completely
> to
> > Access or SQL Server but I don't think that it's ever going to happen.
> >
> > During the time I've worked with him he's had an idea for electronic
> > document storage that he keeps running past me.  We talked about it again
> on
> > Thursday this past week.
> >
> > He receives requests for bids via fax.  Sometimes these documents are a
> > couple dozen pages long.  He doesn't bid on every item on every page; so
> > he'd like to save only those fax pages that contain the items he bids on.
> >  He wants to save those pages in another file for reference without
> having
> > to print a hard copy at all.  In the last 12 months he responded to over
> > 1400 bid requests.
> >
> > He also wants to create PDF documents for his invoices and order
> > acknowledgements...again, without having to print them.
> >
> > His thought is to use Access as the mechanism for automating his faxing.
>  If
> > he has to send out 10 bids in a day, with three of them to the same
> company,
> > he wants to be able to control a fax program (WinFax Pro is the only one
> I'm
> > really familiar with) through Access to send faxes to multiple companies,
> > with multiple documents to the same company.
> >
> > I suggested that he consider sending e-mails instead with attachments.
> >
> > 1) What kind of experiences have you had using Access to control WinFax
> Pro?
> >
> > 2) I've seen messages here relating to controlling Outlook with VBA.
>  What's
> > your feeling about the desirability of that sort of operation?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Steve Erbach
> > Neenah, WI
>