[AccessD] Winfax Pro and Access

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