Minimum Access Version for Rich Text

[Danick]

I have an Access Application Version 2003 with the tables in an Access 2000 back end. All is good. But I’m having a little difficulty with the formatting of some memo fields that I’m outputting to Outlook emails. The VBA works but the formatting and output isn’t as nice as I’d like to have.

So without getting into too much detail, my question is, what is the minimum Access Version that I need to have in both front and back end to keep the rich text format when outputting to rich text or html. Can I convert just one or the other or does it have to be both.

 

[Danick]

Actually - forget about this. I tried it and it seems that you do need to convert both front and back ends to get the Rich Text Field to work.

But then I've encountered so many errors in the first 5 minutes that I decided to just live with the formatting issue instead of trying to fix who knows how many more code errors I'll find. Maybe a project for when I got nothing better to do...

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Per this article, your answer is Ac2007 is the earliest version to support RTF correctly.

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/m...-work-with-rich-text-in-access-2007-and-2010/

 

[Pat Hartman]

However, if you were to purchase Access today, there is no reason to buy anything except the current version which is A2016. You can get an O365 home subscription for about $60 per year that will include Access, Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. For an extra $30, you can upgrade to 5 installs so your whole family can have the newest version of Office.

For your clients, if they are not prepared to upgrade you can distribute the Access 2016 runtime but you will need to be careful with Office automation when your user has older versions of Office than you do.

 

[Danick]

However, if you were to purchase Access today, there is no reason to buy anything except the current version which is A2016. You can get an O365 home subscription for about $60 per year that will include Access, Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. For an extra $30, you can upgrade to 5 installs so your whole family can have the newest version of Office.

For your clients, if they are not prepared to upgrade you can distribute the Access 2016 runtime but you will need to be careful with Office automation when your user has older versions of Office than you do.

My company provides employees with Access 2010. I've been requesting that our IT dept do not remove Access 2003 till now. But I decided to try and update my database so that I can use the Rich Text feature.

After converting the fields, forms and reports to use Rich Text, I was very disappointed to find that the output to Outlook or Word still gets stripped of formatting. This was the only reason for updating!!!

Am I doing something wrong? I used bullets and highlights in the form with looks great on the report, but then disappears when I use acFormatRTF to a Word document or acFormatHTML to Outlook email

DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputReport, "rptCompanyNotes", acFormatRTF, CurrentProject.Path & "\" & DocName, True

If there isn't anyway to keep the formatting, I'll just go back to 2003...

 

[Mark_]

You may want to use VBA to send your EMail. Much more flexible and you can easily use plain text, HTML, or RTF.

You would want to look HERE for some basic help and then do a search on this forum for more elaborate methods.

 

[Danick]

You may want to use VBA to send your EMail. Much more flexible and you can easily use plain text, HTML, or RTF.

You would want to look HERE for some basic help and then do a search on this forum for more elaborate methods.

I tried to send it out as an email but it still shows up in Outlook without any formatting. Are you saying that there IS as way of sending an Access 2010 report to Outlook 2013 and still keep all the formatting? Like the bullets, highlights, indents, bold, underlines, etc... ?

Here's my code. This works, and the Access Report looks great, but the all the formatting described above is gone when sending to Outlook.

Dim strline, strHTML
Dim OL As Outlook.Application
Dim MyItem As Outlook.MailItem

Dim DocName As String
DocName = "CompanyNotes.html"

  Set OL = New Outlook.Application
  Set MyItem = Outlook.Application.CreateItem(olMailItem)
  
DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputReport, "rptCompanyNotes", acFormatHTML, CurrentProject.Path & "\" & DocName

  
  Open CurrentProject.Path & "\" & DocName For Input As 1
  Do While Not EOF(1)
    Input #1, strline
    strHTML = strHTML & strline
  Loop
  Close 1
  ' If OL2002 set the BodyFormat
  If Left(OL.Version, 2) = "10" Then
    MyItem.BodyFormat = olFormatHTML
  End If
  MyItem.Subject = "Company Notes"
  MyItem.HTMLBody = strHTML
  MyItem.Display

 

[isladogs]

Why not just save the report as PDF attachment to your email.

 

[Danick]

Why not just save the report as PDF attachment to your email.

Because the recipients of the report want to be able to copy and paste parts of the email to other emails of their own. And senior management does not like to open attachments on their phones...

 

[Mark_]

I have an Access Application Version 2003 with the tables in an Access 2000 back end. All is good. But I’m having a little difficulty with the formatting of some memo fields that I’m outputting to Outlook emails. The VBA works but the formatting and output isn’t as nice as I’d like to have.

DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputReport, "rptCompanyNotes", [B]acFormatHTML[/B], CurrentProject.Path & "\" & DocName

OK, Two steps back.

Are you trying to use a memo field OR are you trying to use a report?

You need to be very clear about what you are trying to do for us to be able to help you.

The code you posted looks like you export a report as HTML then try to read it back in line by line to put into the body of your Email. Where EXACTLY are you trying to use Rich text at?

 

[Danick]

OK, Two steps back.

Are you trying to use a memo field OR are you trying to use a report?

You need to be very clear about what you are trying to do for us to be able to help you.

The code you posted looks like you export a report as HTML then try to read it back in line by line to put into the body of your Email. Where EXACTLY are you trying to use Rich text at?

I'm actually doing both. One button outputs to a .RTF and another button to .html for Outlook. I've been trying different ways to get a properly formatted Rich Text memo field to anything that isn't an attachment.

Originally, I would output to an .rtf and then just copy and paste the info to an email. Then I created another button to do it automatically to an email using .html hoping that the formatting would be better. But it wasn't. So that's why I decided to try to upgrade to Access 2010 thinking that the problem was with Access 2003. But it's turning out that Access 2010 can't do it either. Am I wrong? Has anyone managed to output an Access Rich Text Memo field to a properly formatted document?

 

[isladogs]

Because the recipients of the report want to be able to copy and paste parts of the email to other emails of their own. And senior management does not like to open attachments on their phones...

You can copy and paste parts of a pdf....
Ok suggest a compromise
Enter a summary if your report with minimal formatting using plain text as the email body AND the PDF as the attachment

 

[Danick]

Thanks for the suggestion ridders, but this has already been tried and discussed and it's a no go. No attachments.

Has anyone managed to output an Access Rich Text Memo field to a properly formatted document?

I've started looking into mail merge which may be a solution worth looking into. The report called "rptCompanyNotes" is being generated from a query. There maybe a way to use Microsoft Word's mail merge feature to link to the database and pull the data directly from the query. I've just starting to reading up on it, so I don't know for sure if it will work. Seems like a little more work than I would have liked, but if it works...

 

[Mark_]

Have you tried using .RTFBody instead of .HTMLBody?

 

[isladogs]

OK - it is possible to do some clever stuff with HTML email including font formatting & embedded images
This is a very basic test email I use for checking email with access

You could embed an image of your report but obviously that wouldn't allow copy & paste

However, its definitely not possible to send a report in the email body.

I doubt mail merge will solve your issue either

You may find this thread worth reading (including the attached files)
https://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=294990&highlight=HTML+email

Otherwise suggest you ask senior management if they are prepared to pay for an add-in e.g. from FMS

good luck!