Password Protection for E-mailed Access Report

[Dika At Work]

Password Protection for E-mailed Access Report
Sorry this is a bit long winded but here goes - we have a very simple Access 2002 DB of 60 – 100 client records. It’s updated weekly and a report is then sent to a distribution list. In the past it was printed and faxed. As all on the list have e-mail I set up a macro to e-mail the .mdb to an Outook Distribution List. It works wonderfully and is much easier and faster. However - a couple of weeks ago one of the users complained saying we must password protect the data. Our Exchange Server is not yet set up to use certificates and Ditital IDs so I worked out the only way I can think of to p/w protect the file. The data is exported as an RTF. Once the user is in Outlook she opens the attachment and runs a macro in Word which :-
Saves the RTF as a DOC file (uses the same name each time)
Saves the DOC file with password protection
However the user reports that often it seems to link to the previous weeks data unless she deletes the attached file and opens the TEMP internet files folder, finds the correct week and attaches that.
Can anyone think of an easier and more foolproof way of doing this – is there something in Access I have missed?
Thanks for any help or advice – Dika

 

[richary]

It sounds as if you have two seperate problems

Firstly saving in the temp folder
------------------------------
How is she opening the attachment in Outlook?
If she is just double clicking it to open in Word, it will be opened from the windows Temp folder which would explain the behaviour you are seeing.

Either

1. Ask the user to use "Save As.." to save the word doc to the correct folder and then open it.

2. Modify the Macro to save the Word doc to the correct folder

Secondly, attaching outated info
-------------------------------

But (not withstanding the above), Outlook will retain the copy of the word doc as part of the email, whether or not you update the version on disc. As you say you will have to re-attach the modified file in order to update the info

You could modify your word macro to send the .DOC file to the recipent from outside Outlook.

 

[Dika At Work]

It sounds as if you have two seperate problems

Firstly saving in the temp folder
------------------------------
How is she opening the attachment in Outlook?
If she is just double clicking it to open in Word, it will be opened from the windows Temp folder which would explain the behaviour you are seeing.

Either

1. Ask the user to use "Save As.." to save the word doc to the correct folder and then open it.

2. Modify the Macro to save the Word doc to the correct folder

Secondly, attaching outated info
-------------------------------

But (not withstanding the above), Outlook will retain the copy of the word doc as part of the email, whether or not you update the version on disc. As you say you will have to re-attach the modified file in order to update the info

You could modify your word macro to send the .DOC file to the recipent from outside Outlook.

Hi Richary - yes, she is just double clicking which takes her into Word. The Macro (in Word) then saves the RFT as a DOC, always in the LINKED REPORTS folded and then closes the RFT and opens opens the DOC file, saving it with P/W protection. She then closes Word. It just seems that when she goes back into Outlook sometimes it is linked correctly to the DOC in the Linked Reports and sometimes it is the linked to the TEMP file. It must be something to do with Outlook attaching to a temporary file, not the actual one itself, but why does it work sometimes?! I do actually have her deleting the attachment and re-attaching the correct file, but of course this is more cumbersome. I was just hoping I had missed something on the Access or Outlook side. But thanks for you imput - Dika