Sending emails from Cardbox

The email field: In all our descriptions we assume that you have designed a separate field for email addresses into your format. We'll refer to it as "the email field": you can give it any name you like.

The principal source of reference information and sample macros is the Cardbox help file: see Help Point 529.

Quick and simple blank emails

If you give your email field the caption "mailto:" (with no space after the colon) then the email address you put into that field will appear as an underlined hyperlink. Clicking on the link will open a blank, pre-addressed email in your normal email program, ready for you to add a subject and a message.

Going half a step further

You can set up a macro that does the same sort of thing, without requiring a "mailto:" prefix. You can arrange for the macro to be activated when you click on a button in your format design or when you press a particular key. Depending on your email program, the macro may also be able to fill in the subject of the email automatically, or even the text of a short message.

Sending: directly, or through your email program?

If you want to go any further than this then you have a choice: you can send your emails through your normal email program or you can send them directly from Cardbox.

Sending emails directly from Cardbox

Cardbox is able to send emails through a mail server that uses SMTP, the standard email protocol for the Internet.

Emails sent in this way never go near your own email program. This means that you will have no record of the outgoing messages in your outbox or in any archive folders you may be keeping. If you are using Cardbox to send thousands of automated emails, this may well be an advantage; if it isn't, it is possible to modify the Cardbox commands so that they send you a copy of everything that is sent.

To send a record (or a set of records) to a single email address, use File > Send As Email.
To send a batch of emails (one email per record, to an address given in the record), use Tools > Bulk Email.

To find out more about one of these commands, enter the command and then press F1 to get on-line help.

To use Cardbox to send emails directly, you need to have access to an SMTP email server.

If you have an ordinary dial-up or broadband Internet connection then your Internet service provider will be able to tell you the name of the SMTP server to use.
In a corporate environment you will have to ask your system administrator whether you are allowed to send emails using SMTP.
A further alternative is to subscribe to commercial SMTP server services from suppliers such as www.authsmtp.com or www.smtp.com: search for "SMTP server" in Google and look at the advertisements.

Sending emails through an email program

It is possible to send emails from Cardbox via your email program. If you do this, emails sent automatically by Cardbox behave in exactly the same way as emails you have created yourself. They will sit in the same outbox, they will be sent in the same way, and they will go into the same archive folders after being sent.

Sample macros for Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and Eudora: To read about these, open Cardbox and use Help > Help Points to view Help Point 529.
Sample macro for Microsoft Outlook, with images as attachments: You can adapt the sample macro or use its principles to create macros of your own.
Modifying the sample macros: Our sample bulk-email macros send emails containing sample text such as "This is a message". Here are some methods for getting real messages into those macros so that you can use them to send real emails.